Apr 07 2009
Of Butterflies, Monsters, and Social Marketing
What does Social Marketing on the Web2.0 mean?
You join a community, add as many people to your ‘friends’ list, and start sending them as many ads as you can, before they remove you….
Is it just me who makes a difference between marketing and advertising?
About two years ago, the ‘MySpace Butterfly’ was born. It started as a joke, sending your friends a link to what was sure to be be opened, like something funny, which contained an ad. Now some guys certainly followed the advice to quickly fake a profile of a sexy Blonde, who claimed to show her nude photos, others skipped the joke and sent out their plain ads right away. So, when the short life of the butterfly was over, it bred a monster that destroyed social communities.
Now people in social communities are afraid of networking, because nobody likes to be advertised, even less to be sold to.
That sure has not much to do with Social Marketing.
Wasn’t the primary idea of taking part in web2.0 to ‘go out’ without having to leave your house, meet with old friends and find new ones, as the majority of young, non -marketing, people still do?
Forums, groups, chat rooms – the social club, or the pub on the Internet. Building relationships with other individuals, discussing about God and the World, personal problems, and …why not your interesting and lucrative business, or the helpful stuff the marketer just happens to have at hand?
That would be Social Marketing, or as it is also called, Relationship Marketing.
Everyone has heard about the rules, that appear in many ‘how tos’, like ‘how to write a sales letter’, ‘how to niche-blog for marketing’, and so on: Tell the people what they need it for, appear trustworthy – which means, make yourself known before in a positive way.
Everyone is an expert in something s/he likes to do, and it can be something very simple. There is hardly any hobby, one could not find affiliate-products for or even write an ebook with short instructions or tricks about it. Why should it be so complicated to tell ones Internet friends?
I suppose it is, because everyone strives to learn ‘the Secrets of Internet Marketing’. In fact, there are no real secrets, just a vast multitude of skills that needs to be learned. Among the most important is how to advertise – on the technical side. Naturally, everyone is happy to have learned a new skill, and rushes off to use it.
Marketing Psychology is something that would need longer and deeper explanations – but it is indeed hard to teach that, because the typical ‘newbie’ does not have the patience to learn things, that will not immediately show results. They ask for the straight way to the money, they want to know HOW and mostly don’t have the question WHY on their mind.
And the gurus teach, what they want to learn, otherwise nobody would consult them (and they would not earn money).
To solve the secret of Marketing Psychology can be just too simple: Market to people like would want to be marketed to, approach them, as you would like to be approached. When you belong to the same group, share the same interests, you do not have to learn to read their minds in order to know what they want.
The ‘money making’ mindset is often an obstacle to success. It is much better, to think about a business one can identify with before starting to plan it. That gives you the advantage, you can automatically also identify with the customers and website visitors you target.
Two basic principles: Know your product/subject. Know your target group.
Next, you can enter any community, interest-group, or forum as yourself and do Social Marketing in a natural and effective way and thus earn money. - Unless the advertising- and spam monsters have driven all possible customers away….
