Promoting Vs Relationship Building
Posted: November 21, 2008 • Filed under: Social Media MarketingIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to get the latest posts, Thanks for visiting! If you want to link to me or this post please read how to link to me
I’ve had a few people/companies ask me to help them promote something online, oftentimes what they ask me to promote has nothing to do with me or what I write about, it’s like asking me to write about or help promote a new dog collar. Can you honestly imagine me trying to promote a dog collar on this site? I can just see the post now:
“Today we’re going to talk about social media strategy and dog collars with our guest blogger “pongo” the Doberman…” Ya, it would be THAT bad.
I thought I should make it very clear to people that promotion is not the same as relationship building. You don’t want me to promote, you want to build connections and relationships, and you know who has to do it? YOU!
Promotion is usually one way temporary communication: here’s a coupon to a department store, today only Macy’s is having a sale, buy one get one free, etc, those are promotions, they arent’ bad necessarily, but they are temporary; promotions expire. Would you rather promote to millions or build relationships with thousands? (sneaky, you picked both didn’t you?)
It’s tough for people that are new to the social media space to grasp this. They think that just because a blog gets thousands of readers that they should reach out to that blogger and ask them to write a post about their product or service. This isn’t how it works folks. You need to be relevant, you need to find the people that are in your industry and then reach out to them. You also have to have an online presence, if you don’t exist online or you just have a static website, then there is nothing that can be done for you. I can help you create social media strategies that align with your business goals, I can help you learn how to use the various social media platforms, I can advise you on how to structure your site, and I can create SEO strategies for you, but I can’t promote you.
Correct me if I’m wrong but it appears that people are getting a bit lazy aren’t they? It seems that people want to get involved in social media but they don’t want to be the ones creating the content and building the relationships, they just want to have the presence. I’ll tell you right now, that won’t do you any good. If you want to get involved online then you are going to have to work for it, you are going to have to work to get the respect and attention of other people, you can’t pay someone to do that for you. Sure, I know you’re busy, but so are all the other people in the world and if they have the time to interact with you then you better make time to interact with them.
You also can’t say you want to get involved in social media from January to February for a product launch, and then cut it off. I have had several people ask me what they could do for 2 months to help build an audience around their product or service, then once the product/service is out, they want to stop…why!? You have to realize that you can’t turn off the conversations and the relationships, they’re already out there talking about, do you really want them to shut up?
Promotion is temporary, it’s like getting those 20% of coupons to stores that last a month or two, then they’re gone. Your promotion is going to be temporary but your conversations and relationships won’t be. Long after your promotion ends there will still be users out there talking about you and wanting to interact with you, and what are you going to tell them? “Sorry the promotion has expired?”
What are your thoughts on this?
Thanks for reading
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