There are 4 Types Out There Using Social Media Sites:
- Promoters: Everyone is promoting something. Smart people conceal it in a nicely packaged way. It’s always something whether the user knows it or not. i.e. a cause, themselves, someone else, a company, an agenda, etc.
- Personalities: Every user, company, cause, business, brand has a personality. Too much personality means your hiding something, so relax and be yourself. Some incorporate personality into social media to give it character while others put too much personality into their content to cover up the fact that it’s crap. Magicians use smoke and mirrors. Insecure people abuse sarcasm. Bad corporate sites use bad action script. . . Get my point?
- Parasites: People that feed off others. At some point everyone gets an idea from someone else. Just about every “social media blog” out there is just recycled and repackaged old ideas with new words. Isn’t that just a cornerstone marketing? Every great message out there not only needs an industry expert, it needs a great marketer to make the great message sound like something groundbreaking even if it’s not. Nevertheless, everyone feeds off each other in some way. We feed off each other on social media for ideas, information, inspiration, and so on. It is when you are feeding off everyone else too much that you just become a nuisance. Any and most of the “feeding” activity you do should be for inspiration or ideas and then transformed into more ideas for others to feed from. On the other hand, you could not be feeding off any conversation at all in which case you would fall into the last category. . .
- People That Talk to Themselves: We all have sent out a social media message to find that no one is listening or cares what you have to say. Anyone new to social media has had this experience because you haven’t identified your audience or maybe even your message yet. Often new blogs and their writers feel like they’re talking to themselves. . . Bueller? But if you id your social media audience and start creating messages they find useful and then appropriately delivering the message, you will begin to stop talking to yourself and start having a conversation with your audience. Hooray for making superficial friends on social media! bueller?
The Bottom Line: The best practice is to incorporate all 4 types and find the best balance to get your message across. For instance, I cannot just keep promoting my blog as a social media blog and expect to get people’s attention by just preaching my agenda over and over. I need to pull some of my personality into it, be a bit of a parasite and feed off of others for guidance and inspiration, and finally sometimes I need to start out by talking to myself with the hopes that someone else finds this information worthy of a read. Bueller?
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Twitter: michaelbmaine
June 3, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Defining an audience is one of the most crucial things you can do with regards to any marketing.
Good job. Keep writing quality content.
Whether it be you, a product, a service, mission, or anything else, unless a clear audience is defined, a person or organization has little chance of effectively reaching them. As a marketer, I get requests for help in “growing this” and “selling more of that.” One of the first things I ask is, “What can you do to make your product or service better?” and “What is your target market?”
When starting out in social media, it’s easy to want to wake up with 10,000 followers on Twitter; 1,000,000 subscribers to your RSS feed; etc., but it doesn’t happen overnight. Quantity does not equal quality. You’re right, superficial friends are just that, superficial friends. Marketing can be broken down to having a superior product, an audience, and find the most effective ways to make them find each other.