So that we are all on the same page, I think it’s important to get with a social media marketing given – numbers are nice but it’s relationships that are important.
To put it another way – it’s great to be able to point to several thousand friends or followers but that’s doesn’t mean your social media activity is doing its job.
The other problem is that zero activity is unlikely to add to follower numbers. So the temptation is to keep pushing, pushing, pushing…way beyond levels of interest.
Recently, on a page I administer, I was asked to plug a link from a group of expats. It’s the kind of thing that, if it had been a charity requesting I’d have done it without thinking twice. But passing on this message – which I am pretty sure our followers had heard, and moved on from, had absolutely no positive benefits I could think of.
To put it another way – if other people are sharing your links then that’s great. If it takes on a life of it’s own then that’s the holy grail of “going viral”. But if you’re pushing it at every turn and pasting links in every location then it’s easy to become an irritant. Worse still it can cross over the line into being spam.
When it comes to working for clients it’s a difficult one to gauge. Too little and it looks like laziness to the client. Too much and you’ve lost your audience. I’m sure I have crossed the line before.
Maybe the test of spam is as much about interest as it is frequency or who sent it. If I have no interest then it is spam. If I share it with my followers, who also have no interest, then that’s so much more spam.
When content is created we can give it a push in the right direction. We can tweet it, blog it and add it to our status update. Much beyond that and it can irritate.
A lot of social media, it occurs to me, is actually about forgetting what you think good online marketing might be. Instead, go back to social norms.
Don’t be pushy. Don’t ask favours of strangers. Don’t be too needy. Don’t be just plane weird. Don’t make people avoid you (or press that Facebook “hide” button). Don’t talk too loudly.
Or how about this…be yourself, if they love you then they love you. If they don’t then learn to live with it.
If what you have created isn’t interesting then it’s better to let it go and learn from it. Or perhaps the content is good but interest has already peaked.
“Going viral” doesn’t mean begging for plugs and links. Just as being popular isn’t helped by pleading with people to be your friend. Maybe it’s better to have a small circle of close devoted friends than being regarded by many many more as an irritant.
Flogging a dead horse will only alienate followers. Your sheer activity may mean you numbers go up – but it doesn’t mean they love you.
