Avoiding social media spam
The web is chalk full of really good social software applications. Some help you connect with friends, share things you find on the web, create and share video, images or thoughts and many of the good ones are accessible from virtually any device, while letting you extend or build upon them through open APIs. The good services are good, usually because they do one thing really well.
Facebook (friends), Flickr (photos), Delicious (bookmarks), WordPress (writing), YouTube (video) and last.fm (music) come to mind as best-of-breed tools for sharing. It’s the ease-of-use that draws people in, while the quality of interaction likely determines adoption and longevity. The really good ones also tend to get bought by a big player, as even with the small list above, the first two are owned by Yahoo, while YouTube is owned by Google and last.fm by CBS.
The psychology of sharing
What are we actually doing when we share? We’re putting a piece of ourselves out there for …. consumption, reaction, response … anything really. I’m convinced, though, that it comes down to people sharing and connecting with other people. We want to connect and discover and, as such, when social media is used to promote products it lacks authenticity. Even in the nonprofit sector, where groups like Tech Soup are remixing the web for social change, it still comes down to a social thing – a person, a problem to fix, or a law to change, for example. The ugly truth about your social network is actually that most people are using it for pretty mundane stuff anyway, so making a marketing channel out of it starts from a point of weakness. It’s not a captive audience like the one staring at one channel during a movie. The internet attention focus is far more limited.
When you replace one of the people in that equation with a service or a product – a thing in essence – the dynamic changes. It’s not a conversation, but an advertisement or a broadcast. The dialogue is replaced by a monologue. As we continue to share, connect, contribute, and re-use, we begin to build what’s being referred to as our social graph, the “map of our global network and how we’re related.” By definition, a thing cannot have a social graph because a thing is not social. Notwithstanding the legal oddity that gives a corporation the rights of a real person, this notion doesn’t extend to social relationships very well. Sure, corporations can have relationships with customers, but not when they make that relationship all about promotion, marketing or selling. I don’t buy the whole Mashable post, but this quote about being human is great advice:
Don’t want the worst day of your life to be played over and over again like Groundhog Day? Then don’t talk, share, Tweet or write about it via social media. That said, no one is happy, or perfect all of the time. It’s okay to let people into the “real” events which happen in your life. Social media for business is about return on engagement. Connect with people, build opportunities through dialogue which would not have otherwise occurred, then connect them with your business.
Make it real
This brings me to the main point I’m trying to make. Marketers are grappling with social media just like many of us are, to make it have value for them. Unfortunately, many of them think of the social web as just another media channel, with the same rules as traditional ones. Product promotion is largely viewed as taking because it’s only about getting money from a customer. Social media is about giving and taking. Sure, you can be a little promotional at times, but you’ve also got to contribute something for no other reason than the act of sharing. That’s the whole point of the ingredients of the social graph – they change, morph and mutate based on user contributions.
If you want to market a product or service via social media, remember one key thing. Connect with other people as a person, put a face on what you promote and make it about real relationships. Just like email, social media spam is bad.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:49 pm
[...] Originally posted here: James Wanless » journal » Avoiding social media spam [...]
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:32 am
[...] With Wealthy Affiliate..Special Offers And Product Promotions Internet Marketing | DKG CreativeJames Wanless » journal » Avoiding social media spamThe New Skittles Website Is A Twitter Search For “Skittles”The Most Effective Web [...]
July 15th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
[...] Organizations must cede power. Using Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with customers has taught many companies that they can no longer control the message. This also rings true when using Web 2.0 tools for internal communication. Companies that once held to a command-and-control paradigm for corporate messaging are finding it hard to maintain that stance. Avoiding social media spam [...]