Stop Using Social Media and Start Becoming Social
So now that I’m on the job market, I’ve noticed one constant during my job search. Whether or not the job posting explicitly asks for someone to fill the position or not (and there are a lot of Social Media postings out there), a question about social media pops up in just about every job interview I’ve been on. Hell, there are even doctors out there looking for social media wizards.
In these interviews I’m generally asked how I would use social media to improve the company. The other day, after being asked for the third straight interview, I responded with with this.
“I could name a whole bunch of fads, but it would be difficult for me to tell you offhand what exactly would work well for you. What’s most important is that whatever I would develop for you would have to do one of two things: Create a valuable dialogue between this company and your consumer or make it easier for that consumer to share interesting information about your company to others that’s of value to their lives. If you don’t accomplish that, then you might as well not do it because you won’t be successful.”
That may seem like common sense, but I’ll be damned if I don’t see the rule broken all over the place. Right now there’s an unhealthy love affair with social media that’d been ginned up due to articles in BusinessWeek and the like about how social media will turn your also-ran into the lead dog in whatever field you’re in.
That’s horse sh*t.
Anybody peddling that propaganda your way is no better than late night infomercials for products like the Internet Treasure Chest that’ll make you hundreds of thousands of dollars in as little as 10 minutes/day. Hell, just double-check that job posting I mentioned earlier. They want a social media person to work magic in only 10 hours a week.
Bottom line is that the fundamentals of advertising that held true at the advent of the craft still hold true in social media: benefits, not features, sell. Right now everyone is obsessed with the features, these platforms that provide easy ways to reach hundreds and thousands of people. All the while, they’re missing the benefits. The benefit to the consumer is the value you add to their lives through social media. If you’re not delivering on the benefits, then you better start re-evaluating your strategy.
People seem to forget that Twitter, for example, is opt-in by nature. Just as quickly as you can gain 100 followers, you can lose 70 the following day if you’re peddling garbage. But unlike e-mail, where unsubscribe links are small and often hidden as legally as possible, the unfollow button is prominently displayed under your name on Twitter.
I’ll leave you with a final thought from Maria Veloso’s excellent Web Copy That Sells
“The two words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.”
So stop contributing information. Noise is cluttering the web faster than carbon is clogging up the atmosphere. Make your mark, or miss the party.
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About The Author
Anthony Perez
Anthony Perez is a scatterbrained insomniac with aspirations of becoming a film director. For now, he's a community manager at StrawberryFrog, a global digital marketing agency. He's worked for social media agency Conversation, digital media planning agency Flying Point Media, and also did direct B2B sales for Quill office supplies. He also helped do research for Greg Verdino's upcoming book microMARKETING. Also check the gaming blog he manages over at Smashpad.com.
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