#SocialMedia – Community Building and the Cure for Advertisement Overload
Are you keeping up with the latest in marketing today? Are your advertising dollars being well spent? Have you dabbled in Adwords, making your own website, trying to make a lead machine out of your online presence? How is it going? No, really…how’s it going?
Things aren’t the way they used to be. People don’t browse the yellow pages, little less keep those massive things. People don’t pay attention to the sticker on your car and jot down the phone number while on the freeway, people barely read the ads on the highway that they pass day after day. They don’t even check out your website…there’s only trillions of them! What are they doing?
They are on social networks…even in the car. People are checking statuses on Facebook, watching videos, texting, talking or tweeting in the car. (We know you do it too! But please don’t tweet and drive, you are endangering others!) Why do they do it? Boredom.
Normally the consumer is passively swarmed with advertisement overload. This makes for one desensitized consumer! Social Media Marketing is the way to go. Companies have more reach to the consumer now than ever before, but most aren’t utilizing it, and half of those that are aren’t doing it properly!
People want entertainment! They sure aren’t going to pay attention to your boring advertisement bit. You need something fun, something interesting, something that means something to them.
The best way to show this to someone is to prove you are a real person, with real opinions, and real advice. Social media lets you do this. It’s like a TV channel that is on when the person wants, they can find things, compare things, and learn to trust people rather than pages of text.
The idea is that there is a real person (or group of people) behind that user name. Social media works best for the interested. Don’t like it? Tough, then you will lose one of the largest and growing advertisement mediums ever. #fail.
Unfortunately, there is no way to force companies to use social media properly. We can train you, we can give you the best advice, we can even show you exactly how to tweet and who to talk to, but just like taking a horse to water, we can’t make you drink.
So go ahead, don’t install twitter on your phone. Leave peoples comments unanswered and unmoderated, spam your blogs posts and latest “product” news on your profiles. People will just ignore you. Very few people buy from the random man who enters a restaurant trying to sell watches. *hint: Do you really think about buying a watch while looking through your dinner menu?
Social media is akin to community building, it is your direct audience, it is second only to personal referral, why? Because it IS personal referral. Its other people talking to and about you! Not only that but the whole of the internet can see that conversation!
Learn to treat people on social media like a customer who walked in the door, or who you met on the street while buying groceries.
“Follow” peoples lives. Learn to “Like” them, and then make “Connections” that will grow your business faster than you can say ‘tweet’!℠
*For those you you who didn’t get it the above was a reference to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
