Is This The Reason Your Social Media Marketing Isn’t Working?

Note: This article is an excerpt from ’30 Social Media Hacks: A Cheat Sheet For Building Your Business With Social Media’ – to get the full FREE ebook register here or in the box at the bottom of the page.

All over the web, you can see certain businesses who have jumped on social networks, and are very active, posting numerous updates. But they’re failing miserably by any standard you care to name.

Oh, people know them alright – but they don’t like them. In fact, those businesses may even be developing an active dislike amongst many potentially perfect customers.

They’re getting social media very wrong because they haven’t discovered one simple – yet vitally important – concept.

If all you do is shout about yourself – YOUR business, YOUR products, YOUR offers – pretty soon people will be climbing the walls just to AVOID you.

It’s like being stuck with the bore at the party who only talks about themselves – and how much fun is that?

People care about themselves and their needs, not yours. Social networks like Facebook are rightly likened to a bar environment – somewhere people go so they can relax and ‘see’ their friends. Would YOU want a salesman jumping down your throat in that setting?

Realise that when you constantly flood your social channels with desperate-looking ‘buy now’ messages, you are actually turning off potential customers and getting further away from initiating the kind of relationships you desire.

Your followers – hitherto with pretty open minds – will realise they don’t like you after all. And with one click, they’ll silence you forever (that is, stop your updates appearing in their personal stream).

So begins the death spiral of lack of interest and lack of motivation.

But… you CAN promote your business on social media very effectively, without doing this. Here’s how…

Here’s the important point. Note it well. Lock it in your brain. Take it to your grave.

Social media is based on sharing. And people will love you if you will only share material of value.

What is value?

You provide value when you help the other person get what THEY want. This might be information, news, or resources that help them professionally, in their business or job, or satisfy personal needs, interests or desires.

Brainstorm the type of value your ideal customer would like and that you can provide. You don’t need to interpret it super-narrowly:

If you sell handmade furniture for example, talk about interior design in general, about easy furniture care, about the materials you use and what makes them special.
If you’re a personal trainer, the value you can provide probably isn’t just related to exercise per se, but also to diet, wellbeing, and the active lifestyle.
If you’re a pest controller, don’t just talk about how people can protect their homes and outbuildings from pests, but give tips for easy home care and maintenance in general.

The key is to pinpoint your ideal customer, and understand what’s important in their lives. Create your own valuable content around those ideas and share it, and/or collect and share other people’s useful content in the same area.

If you do this consistently, then not only will your following grow but you will earn the right, in the minds of your connections, to promote yourself directly from time to time.

Because they appreciate your useful content, they’ll be receptive to hearing more of what you can offer (and frequently they will come to you for help without you even asking!). Don’t get me wrong – there is a time and a place for promotion – but the best way to promote is always to tie in your promotions with valuable resources and content.

Use content to ‘earn the right’ to have people hear your message and you’ll see far better results.