Does your company really want to hang out with me?

Take a moment to read the above link. If you are trying to entice people to buy from you by making conversations with people on Twitter and Facebook, you might be guilty of doing exactly what Derek is talking about in the blog post.  If you didn’t read it just now, here’s the synopsis.

Have you ever gotten someone’s number that you thought was attractive?  And then when you called them all they did was try to sell you on some MLM or other business opportunity?  How angry were you?  Right.  It’s the same thing with social media.  If you make small talk for a few days and then start blasting links, it’s going to do nothing but turn people off.

Can social media be used to increase business? Yes, of course.  But not if you are annoying people.  And not if they put up a wall, because they can smell your ulterior motive.

I regularly add people on Twitter who have a cool quote that I liked, or if they said something interesting that caught my eye.  And I regularly find obnoxious Affiliate Marketing tweets clogging my stream, causing me to go back and look at who I am following and delete some of the guilty parties.

So my point is this: if you are going to use social networks, blogs, forums, and bookmarking sites, to market your company, fine. But if you are not careful you will be the black sheep.  If you post 50% self-promoting links and the rest is fluff, you are not really doing anyone any favors.  If you are running a sale and want your followers to know about it, cool.  Post it.  But DON’T post it 50 times a day, DON’T auto-DM it to people who have no idea who you are, and DON’T try to trick people.  It will backfire.

A better way to market yourself is by saying hi, here’s what I do, here’s what I offer.  If you want it come get it, but I am not going to hound you everyday, because I am not trying to better myself at your expense.

I have posted status updates on Facebook before about web design and SEO, and people who didn’t know about Webovator have sometimes said, “Oh I didn’t know you were a [designer/SEO/insert-whatever-obscure-career-you-want-here], that’s cool, can you blah blah blah…?”

That is much more effective.  Don’t push your business on people.  Let them come to you IF they have a need.  They will be much more likely to feel lucky to have you in their circle of friends, not only because of your expertise but ALSO because you are not an obnoxiously annoying nuisance.

Don’t be the trickster; be the treat.

Here is a link to someone who left a very insightful comment on the above blog entry:

“Amen. Golden Rule time. Don’t like being sold at? Don’t sell at people. People will do business with people they know and like—*whether you ask for their business or not*
Really, do the folks you interact with on MySpace NOT know you have a CD for sale? Do the folks who visit your business blog NOT know you’re a consultant, or you sell vegetable slicers, or whatever? Of COURSE they know. You can mention it without pitching, just like when someone at a party asks what you do and you say “I sell vegetable slicers.” When people get to know you and like you and TRUST you, you will not need to pitch. You will not need to sell. They will come to you. Like the high-dollar web deal I’ve done this week, with a friend who I’ve never pitched in any way, shape, or form. He came to me, because he knows what I do for work (business consulting and web dev) and when he had a need, he knew where to go.

No pitch. No ‘close’. Just trust, and a painless sale.”