Being Pretty Isn’t Enough For Social Media Marketing

No matter how much money you spend on a graphic designer, a social media expert, and a community manager, you may very well not find the kind of success you want and expect from your investment in social media and social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Being beautiful, friendly, clever, generous, and charming is no longer good enough when you’re not just competing with the student body for Prom King and Queen, you’re now competing with potentially every other beautiful, friendly, clever, generous, and charming person on planet earth. The Internet has flattened the market, allowing anyone to eat your lunch, so just ringing the dinner bell after you launch your social media presence is not going to work as well as you expect.

Mind you, there are exceptions. If there are holes in the market–a vacuum–then filling that need will result in amazing success. Another exception is celebrity. If you already have an undeniable fan-base, it will translate perfectly into success online. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, we have neither.

In order to compete on a world stage, it is essential to aggressively recruit new members. Not just new members, but passionate, enthusiastic, members who will do what you expected Facebook, Google+, and Twitter to do for you in the first place: create firestorms of buzz and word-of-mouth influence. To become a channel of primary, secondary, and tertiary influence that result in your members sharing your content on their walls, resulting on an organic growth, ultimately snowballing into massive conversions and stellar online sales.
Do some research and you’ll find out, to your astonishment, that a majority of those viral videos with over a million views were not “upload it to YouTube and they will come.” Most of them skyrocketed as the direct result of some form of publicity campaign, be it grass roots or from an agency.

Be the catalyst of your natural social media success. Take your fate into your own hands and get off of that bar stool and walk over and start some conversations with all the folks you want to meet. This can include a long-tail blogger outreach campaign, it should include an A-list influencer outreach, be they on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, or wherever.

Membership in your community is a later stage of the hearts-and-minds campaign in which you need to engage. Just collecting Likes or Follows doesn’t often result in engagement. If you spend any time on your Facebook Page Insights, which you do, you’ll understand how important performance is to the success of your social media campaign. You need both quantity and quality of Likes. I won’t kid you: more is better; however, if you have hundreds of thousands of Likes on your Facebook Page but have negligible engagement in your posts in the form of likes and comments, then you will not earn the sort of gravity and popularity to elbow on your members’ Facebook Wall.

If you’re able to prospect passionate followers by going out there–to where they live on their own blogs, forums, Listservs, social networks, and communities–to find them, recruit them, convert them, and win them over, then you’ll start seeing the true power of world-of-mouth marketing.

Glossary of Terms

• Pretty Boy/Girl Syndrome: A symptom of this disease is an expectation that others will go out of their way to pursue you.
• Student body for Prom King and Queen: Competing with the student body for Prom King and Queen is a metaphor for competing with a relatively small group of people.
• Every other beautiful, friendly, clever, generous, and charming person on planet earth: Competing with every other beautiful, friendly, clever, generous, and charming person on planet earth is a metaphor for competing with a very large group of people.
• Holes in the market–a vacuum: A hole in the market is a need that is not being met.
• Undeniable fan-base: An undeniable fan-base is a group of people who are very loyal and supportive of someone or something.
• Firestorms of buzz and word-of-mouth influence: A firestorm of buzz and word-of-mouth influence is a lot of excitement and talk about something.
• Channel of primary, secondary, and tertiary influence: A channel of primary, secondary, and tertiary influence is a way to get people to share your content with others.
• Organic growth: Organic growth is growth that occurs naturally, without the use of paid advertising.
• Massive conversions and stellar online sales: Massive conversions and stellar online sales are very high rates of people buying something from you.
• Viral videos: Viral videos are videos that are shared and watched by a very large number of people.
• Grass roots: Grass roots is a term used to describe something that is done by people who are not part of an official organization.
• Be the catalyst of your natural social media success: Be the catalyst of your natural social media success is a metaphor for being the force that starts something.
• Hearts-and-minds campaign: A hearts-and-minds campaign is a campaign that is designed to win over people's support.
• Engagement: Engagement is a measure of how interested and involved people are with your content.
• Gravity and popularity: Gravity and popularity are metaphors for the power to attract and influence people.
• Elbow on your members’ Facebook Wall: Elbow on your members’ Facebook Wall is a metaphor for being able to get your content seen by your members on Facebook.
• Passionate followers: Passionate followers are people who are very interested and supportive of someone or something.
• Prospect: To prospect is to look for potential customers.
• Convert them: To convert someone is to get them to become a customer.
• World-of-mouth marketing: World-of-mouth marketing is a type of marketing that relies on people talking to each other about a product or service.

Posted on Biznology and Social Media Today in May, 2014.

Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay