I’m a big fan of the new social media sites. Lately I’ve spent more time on Facebook just catching up with old friends. From a marketing standpoint, there’s opportunity in connecting with people and building trust; but this comes with a strong warning- violate that trust and you’re finished. Nothing gets under my skin more than people who use opportunities to connect with people as a way sell another widget. If you’re looking at these social networking sites as an opportunity to sell more products, don’t waste your time. Don’t waste our time. Remember the story of the farmer and the golden goose? What happened when the greedy farmer became impatient?
If you’re truly interested in people and building relationships, then the end result will be that people do business with you. People are more interested in spending their hard earned dollars with people, not entities. So get in the “people business” if you want to get into social media.
Take a lesson from Zappos. They use Twitter as a means to connect; not sell. Almost all of their employees have a Twitter account to give updates, talk to their consumers, and monitor any discontent. The CEO of the company even Twitters. This builds a lot of trust within their community of consumers. They’re building what Seth Godin calls a “Tribe”.
