How Marketing Is Screwing Up Social Marketing

Hey, marketers, I have a suggestion. Reach out to some of the best social sellers in the world like, Koka Sexton, Brian Fanzo, Jack Kosakowski, Jill Rowley, Eric Mitchell, Carlos Gil, etc. and take notes. You need to learn how to social market because you’re making a mess out of it.

Social marketing is just like social selling. It’s about giving, not taking. It’s about sharing, and engaging, not about asking. Social marketing operates from the same principles that social selling does, yet for some reason too many marketers just don’t get it.

I got this email this morning;

Hi Keenan,

I am part of a great new software start-up company called, “We Don’t Know Social Marketing” Technologies. We are creating a mobile application that will breathe dramatic improvement into the lives of sales professionals. Basically, transforming great salespeople into legendary salespeople.

I have been reading and enjoying your blog, and wanted to talk to you about partnering up and having the opportunity to be a guest writer on your site. I found your New Hiring post from the beginning of May particularly interesting, as we posted about LinkedIn and social profiles back in November. Surprising that some people still don’t have public profiles in the sales world. You can read our post here, and the comments are a good read as well: “link to their post.”

On our sales blog, we write about everything from “Bad Sales Habits to Avoid” to “Repairing your Customer Relationship” to polling and discussing if texting prospects is appropriate. We’d love to have the opportunity to be a guest blogger, as I think our posts would be of interest to your readers, and our company has the same edgy that you do. Please let me know if this is a possibility we can discuss further.

Here is a link to the blog: “link to their blog.”

I must get at two or three of these emails a week. It drives me insane because 90% of the time, I’ve never heard of these people or met them before.

I get it. In today’s world links, retweets, blogger networks, thought leaders and more are critical to your success. You need links back to your site for SEO. You need popular bloggers, like traditional media of the past, to talk about you. You need thought leaders to know who you are and share your stuff on LinkedIn and Twitter. I get it, trust me. I know how important these things are to your job. But, the way you’re going about it, is embarrassing and irritating.

Emails like the one above are annoying. They are invasive and selfish. Here’s what the email is really saying;

Keenan

Check us out,! We’re a cool company and we’re gonna take over the world.

I know you’re a thought leader in the space were trying to compete in and therefore we need access to your audience. The audience you’ve meticuloulsy built up over the years, yeah we want access to that one. We don’t follow you on Twitter. We’ve never shared your stuff. We’ve never commented on your blog. We’ve never connected with you LinkedIn so you probably don’t know who we are, but to soften that awkward fact, I’m going to reference a recent post you wrote to at least appear to be part of your community.

Now that I’ve gratitously said I like your work that I’m a “long-time” follower, even though I know you don’t know who we are. I’m now going to ask you to give me access to your community and brand so we can forward our own selfish agenda of growing our business. But, knowing how selfish that sounds, we’re going to tell you how good our content is and how our request to access your community is really for your benefit, not ours, because our content is SO good your readers will just eat it up.

Now that I’ve wasted your time, trying to shamelessly get access to your communtiy and network, I’m going to prove to you how good our content really is and why were so good that saying yes is to a no brainer, by pointing you to a bunch of stuff on our website.

Thanks Keenan for letting us selfishly use you for our own gain. You’re such a great guy!

I know it feels kinda creepy uh? Well, that is exactly what is happening when marketers make these types of requests. It’s insulting to the recipient.

Social marketing is no different than social selling. You have to build relationships. You have to engage. You have to give. You have to share. You have to help. You have to earn the right to ask for access to someone’s community.

Social media makes it very, very, very easy to earn the right to ask, you just have to put in the work.

If you need someone to learn from, follow @PipelinerCRM on Twitter. They are masters of how to social market. Recently they asked me to do a webinar with them. When I got the direct tweet, they required NO introduction. They had been retweeting my stuff, sharing, and engaging for months. I knew who they were, and they had built up tremendous social capital. It was easy to say yes.

Do you want more links? Do you want access to thought leaders in your space? Do you want be a guest blogger? Then EARN IT . . . Please!!!!

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