FAIL At Your Online Social Media Marketing Effort
It’s been a long but enjoyable day. But before I pull the plug on this tremendously relaxing Saturday, I would to share something with you and it’s got to do with how people are going about this whole online marketing thing wrong.
It’s my personal opinion that there’s one way to turn people off online. The only surefire way to lose the fight in this very tiny battlefield is to stick to a formula that you know works. The old method used to work well, I know, but with the economy down in the gutter, everyone’s using the same formula. PLUS, the same formula is costing us too much money.
So, the traditional way of marketing is to knock down every single door you see and shove your products and services into their faces and refuse to leave until they succumb to your harassment. You could advertise in the newspaper but it’s getting expensive. You could hire a new marketing guy but it takes time to train someone new and you can’t exactly afford to hire anyone new at this point in time. You could revamp your brand but every single idea you’re going to have involves spending money.
The logical thing to do is to jump into the internet marketing bandwagon, right?
That’s the right thing to do, I am not saying you’re wrong, but don’t do it blindly and don’t just hand THE FIRST PERSON you know to do the job. You can’t because whatever they do online (and they can do this without waiting for a memo to be passed during a Board of Directors’ meeting) will affect your image! Hire the wrong person and you’re screwed.
In online social media, or the Web 2.0 as some people prefer to call it, it’s imperative that you sell yourself correctly. But you’re not selling your products and services, you’re selling a brand. You’re promoting loyalty. You’re encouraging people to get to know you better. You want to create a personality….a sort of stickiness on the internet that helps people remember you and come back for more.
With more and more people with the same social media marketing modus operandi, you can only create awareness by selling YOURSELF as a brand. You connect with people. You make yourself heard. You make friends and help people understand what kind of person YOU ARE before you get them to understand what you do for a living.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a business or a freelancer! You’ve got to make that CONNECTION with others in order to get online social media marketing to work for you. Shall I say it again for good measure? OK. CONNECTION!
For a business, you can hire someone (or use someone who is currently on your payroll) to create an online persona for your business. And this personality is to connect with people, share his or her experience (on a personal or professional level) with people he or she knows.
It’s plain and simple.
The old method of PUSHING no longer works. Writing notes or blog posts about how WONDERFUL YOU ARE and how amazing your products and services are, shoving your potential clients’ faces into the brochures, flyers, profiles….they don’t work anymore. Blow your own trumpet and watch flocks of potential customers run off in the opposite direction!
It’s now time for some PULLING instead. And friends….the only way to pull is to attract. The only way to attract is to get personal.
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