If you are marketing on facebook – don’t make this mistake
September 27th, 2009
A lot of business’s & marketers have switched onto facebook for marketing & promotion.
After all, alexa shows facebook to be the 3rd ranked site in the world after yahoo and google and according to facebook itself, there are 65 million worldwide users. That’s a big market place.
But most marketing people make a fundamental mistake. In these days of mass automation and bulk processing, it’s easy to forget that behind each profile is a real person – not just a prospect.
Treating people’s profile on facebook like printouts from any other automation or bulk processing tool is a good way to send your online reputation going the wrong way.
Why?
If you were selling something in the street, you wouldn’t systematically go through them asking them one at a time “Do you want to buy this?” and if they hesitated for just a second – you went onto the next one.
No you wouldn’t
That’s a very poor time management on your part.
The temptation is (and yes – we have all done it…) is going along to someone’s profile or a group and posting something like
“Hi, My name is [your name] and this is what I sell [link]” and then leave.
You will never visit that account again. What you have done is just polluted the internet. It’s like writing graffiti on someone’s facebook account.
You can do something different
It’s called getting to know people on a personal level. Just like your first day at school
You find out what they like and don’t like (you do find out what your customers don’t like… don’t you?)
You ask them how they are;show an interest in what they are doing. (You might not be interested in swimming with sharks but they might be…)
And after a while, something magical happens – they begin to like you and even better, they may even trust you – so when they have a problem or they actually get bit by a shark they are likely to ask people they trust for advice. THEN it might be sale time.
Of course this is a longer sales time but something else wonderful takes place – they tell their entire rollerhockey mates who then seek advice from you. That’s much better than selling one item at a time ?
Thought you would agree?
So, – if you are building your online business using your own brand name – then you CANNOT afford to be seen as an internet graffiti artist. Whatever your product. You MUST be seen as someone people can trust.
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