Social media has a set of rules and they’re pretty simple. Here’s a map for you how I visualize this process so hopefully you can successfully put it into play for your own desires.
Social media is the place for socializing, gathering, and conversing. The most important factor is the ability for back and forth interaction, for two-way communication. Tools like Google Friend Connect make this all the more easy.
It’s different than traditional marketing like you see in normal advertising channels on TV and radio stations. For this reason is why most of the big companies screw this up when they attempt a social media campaign and it always falls flat.
At a social gathering do you immediately just walk up to people and start saying “hey buy my stuff” or “hey join my MLM business”.
I doubt you do but if you are this guy you no doubt get escorted out of the party and your reputation precedes you. Then I doubt you get invited to any more parties in the future and the ones you do are low class which no one wants to be at anyway.
What you most likely do when you go to a party is begin friendly chats with no pressure or selling and then start a back-and-forth exchange.
You may ask what kind of work the person you’re talking to does and they may respond in kind and then you can start talking about philosophy or politics or other topics of mutual interest.
Even when you’re talking about your job though the prospect of sales almost never comes up because when people are in a party they don’t want to be sold something.
So why then is this basically what people do online?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a random e-mail on Facebook or MySpace saying “hey check out my site” or “hey buy this”.
I know why you continue to see it because programs can be built which make this kind of thing profitable.
My friend was telling me a story of a guy who basically spammed MySpace walls selling ring tones and made $250,000 inside of six months.
Of course, the police have been circling his house and he’s under constant fear of being taken in. But this is how these things continue to perpetuate on the Internet.
Basically, the biggest thing is to interact on the social sites the way you would at a party in an off-line situation.
start up the communication whatever the appropriate tool for that site is saying hi and asking about something you saw on their profile and see if they respond in kind. After e-mailing back and forth three or four times then you can say “hey if you want to learn more about me check out my blog here”.
Then they’ll know what you do and if it’s something they’re interested in they may buy your stuff. And they can refer you to people they know would be interested and want to buy your stuff.
Either way your blog is your combo of business front and personal space where you can tell your friends about yourself and what you do.
Follow this procedure and philosophy in social media and you’ll have a good experience and get good results.
Follow it not and you’re likely to get flamed from angry members of the community and even have your accounts shut down.
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