Despite your best efforts, long hours and plenty of blood, sweat and tears, your social media efforts will most likely fail. Miserably.
Why? It’s about your intentions. More specifically, how your intentions are perceived.
You may have the best damn blanket in the world and want to tell the world about it. After all, once they know about it, they’ll surely want one. Or maybe ten! And obviously, they’ll be overjoyed that you’re blasting them on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with a steady stream of messages about how they can buy your amazing blanket, right?
No. You’re only going to piss them off and you will lose followers faster than you can say “tweet” if you start blasting them with your sales message. Instead, focus on adding value. Share information your followers can use, even if it doesn’t directly produce any revenue for your company. This will help you build goodwill and trust, and besides, it’s just good karma. Some great examples of people who do this on a daily basis are:
Social media is about building and nurturing relationships, and that doesn’t happen over night. If you want to be different than the 99% of people who fail at social media, you need to develop a plan, stick to it, be consistent and most of all, add value.
You are a very smart person!
Well said. I can’t believe how many people think they can do this and still make money and grow their business.
I think it’s all part of the “get rich quick” mindset that plagues the Internet these days.