For the third time this month I got an EVENT invitation on Facebook from a woman who does in person, divorce recovery workshops… in MICHIGAN!
You would think that the fact I am blissfully married and live in Colorado, I would be eliminated from the list of people this woman markets to, but it doesn’t.She is just blasting her crap to the wind.This kind of marketing causes us all to want to scream and delete everyone’s invitations. Facebook allows you to “add targeting” your events, but most choose to ignore that and they send their invitations to the world.This morning I followed someone back on Twitter, who had followed me last week. Immediately I got the following tweet (Identity has been hidden to protect the ignorant):
Not very personal, considering it’s WHAT WE DO! Duh!If this guy had spent five seconds reading my bio or a few tweets, he would know not to send that message (even though it was surely one of those annoying auto-generated messages that make it even worse).
Social Media has shifted
It’s not actually social media that has shifted, it is the audience who has grown weary of the over-hyped, and irrelevant crap we get in our news feeds, Twitter streams and everywhere else we try to hide from bad marketing. If you want people to listen to you and want to learn more about the services or products you offer, you have to first get personal!Getting personal requires you spend a little more time listening and actually having conversations with people on your social media sites. It requires a little more humanness –a little less automation. Right there I saw most of your eyeballs roll in the back of your head as you thought, “I don’t have more time to listen and I need MORE automation to get all of this done in a day.” And the reality is most of you won’t change the way you are marketing and most of your community members will continue to ignore the generic marketing messages you keep pumping out each day.It’s almost as if everyone was given a social media quota and as long as you push out one Facebook post and two tweets every day, you can check it off of your list. You are wasting time doing it that way. The first word in social media is SOCIAL.
LIKING TO BE WITH AND TALK TO PEOPLE ~ I don’t see where social means, the act of forcing people to read all about you and how great your business is. Remember, people do business with people they LIKE!Look for ways this week to be less self-promoting, more helpful (even if it’s not a sales opportunity), and get a bit more personal with your social media community.
Here are 3 tips for you to focus on this week to be a bit more likeable and SOCIAL:
1. Listen to strategic conversations
(Use saved search queries for your industry or key phrases your target market may be using in their Twitter conversations. These are wonderful, and natural places for you to listen to others, jump in and provide helpful information and value without coming across as a sleazy sales person!
2. Use geo-fencing if you are a local business
You will find this feature in any third-party app such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social. Twitter also has it and most people don’t know about it. Go to
http://Twitter.com/search-advanced and click NEAR THIS PLACE. It will pull all tweets coming from people near you. A great tool for realtors, restaurants, hotels and anyone wanting to connect with locals.
3. Commit 30 minutes to an hour each day engaging in other people’s conversations
Whether you are using Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. to build community and relationships with people you have to spend time liking, commenting and sharing things they are talking about. Just try it for one week. Spend more time on other people’s profiles that you do pumping out content on your own and see what transpires!
Not very personal, considering it’s WHAT WE DO! Duh!If this guy had spent five seconds reading my bio or a few tweets, he would know not to send that message (even though it was surely one of those annoying auto-generated messages that make it even worse).
LIKING TO BE WITH AND TALK TO PEOPLE ~ I don’t see where social means, the act of forcing people to read all about you and how great your business is. Remember, people do business with people they LIKE!Look for ways this week to be less self-promoting, more helpful (even if it’s not a sales opportunity), and get a bit more personal with your social media community.