Given that social media marketing has been around in
earnest for a several years now, you would think there wouldn't be a lot of rules or
guidelines to follow, and for the most part there aren't. But when it comes to
getting the word out about your company on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn,
there is actually one ironclad principle to stick to: being boring, overly "corporate," or mundane is the kiss of
death.
Why? Because the men and women who typically use social media
sites – no matter what age they are – are already savvy to all kinds of
advertising. They've lived through Super Bowl spots, Internet pop-ups, stealth
marketers, and enough variations on print, radio, and TV solicitations to stop
the shopaholic in his or her tracks. We've even gone through spam. When they go
on to social networking sites, it's primarily to see how friends and family
been doing, or even to ask for advice and products, but not to be sold in a
heavy-handed fashion.
That means you have to promote yourself, your business, and
whatever you’re offering in an entertaining way, or at least one that can
attract enough attention to compete with the dozens of other things that can be
immediately clicked on. It's okay to talk about great savings, but you'll get a
lot farther if you can wrap it in some kind of joke, photo collection, or fun
story.
Does this mean you should sell out your marketing plans and
just hope that people will reward your creativity with their attention and
business? Absolutely not. What it means is that you're in the same boat as
every other company on the face of the earth: dealing with a public that's
tired of boring marketing messages and wants something more. You should still
envision your offers in the same way, just be sure to wrap them in a package
that's a little more entertaining.
For the past few decades, it's been getting harder and
harder to convince people to buy if you have an uninteresting message. With
social media, the only thing that's changed is that it's harder to run from
that fact.