Companies everywhere are jumping on the social media bandwagon, and for good reason–The idea of engaging a wide audience with little cost is appealing regardless of your company's size, industry or marketing budget. While these new tools have the potential for powerful, candid relationships with your audience, care must be taken to not turn your social environment into a used car dealership. Social media was birthed in the spirit of conversation and typically only finds success when content is informative or entertaining.
Being quick to jump on the bandwagon without understanding your audience's need for valuable content and conversation can lead to utter failure in the social arena. Grassroots conversation tools such as twitter, facebook, digg, etc. will not fare well as a mechanism for one way sales pitches. In order to be a successful e-socialite, care must be taken not to violate that which makes social media the groundbreaking tool that it is.
The following exerpt from Derek Sivers’ blog sums this up beautifully:
Imagine you have a crush on a girl at the bank.
Every time you talk, it's only business.
But one day she says, “Here's my cellphone number. Call anytime.”
Wow! She likes you!
You call her and ask her out. She says OK.
You meet up for dinner and after talking for 15 minutes she says, “Could I interest you in a home equity loan?”
Arrgh! That's worse than if she had never given you her number in the first place!
The fact that she only wants to talk about her business proves that not only is she not interested in you, but she was trying to trick you.
Now you're insulted and will never go to that bank again, or at least never believe it when they pretend to care about you.
This is what's happening with most companies' “Social Media Strategy”.
They're acting like they want to connect directly with you, get to know you, or hang out where you hang out.
But unless they learn how to stop selling, listen, and be real – they're just permanently alienating potential crushes.