Perfect Pitch: Social Media Without the Sales Job
Posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
An executive asked if I liked his draft blog and could think of any media that might run it. “No and No,” I replied. Like much blogging for business, his piece turned out to be just a re-hashed marketing brochure. As a blatant sales job, it was the antithesis of social media — no editor would touch it. How do you avoid this common mistake and hit the right note?
Despite all that’s been written and said about the importance of using social media to build trust by sharing knowledge and expertise — and to avoid turning SM into a sales tool – much content found in corporate social media programs is only slightly more subtle than the inky advertising supplements that spill out of a Sunday newspaper.
Whether it’s a blog, a tweet, a podcast or a video, everybody clicks his heels and salutes the corporate message. Few have the nerve to discard the agitprop and say what they really think — and what audiences want to hear. Instead, corporate blogs transparently reverse-engineer products into “trends,” including the inevitable link at the end to more sales-speak. Twitter home pages spew links to corporate press releases, reminders of webinars and plugs for upcoming speaking engagements. Podcasts are often the worst, droning on for 20 -30 minutes while the “talent” reads a marketing brochure verbatim. Nowhere to be seen in this wasteland of sales garble: a real live human being speaking his or her mind in a believable way.
End result: A fresh new medium designed to liberate instead fosters conformity. At the root of this problem is the rush to embrace what business perceives as the “next big thing” in marketing and communications. The problem is that businesses sometimes don’t distinguish between the two.
The purpose of marketing is to directly drive sales. Communications is about building awareness, which may, in turn, indirectly drive sales. They rarely mix well. Notwithstanding all the blather about “digital marketing,” social media is really just another vehicle, or set of vehicles, for communications. Used correctly, social media can engage the brain, inform, educate and trigger the process that may lead to interest in your company, and reinforce a purchasing decision at some point.
But when the author uses a blog, tweet or YouTube video to peddle a company’s wares, his or her intentions are immediately obvious, and have the opposite effect to that intended. They turn audiences off, and away.
To drive that thought home, here’s a little illustration.
A while back, a Business Week reporter bent my ear complaining about a tech PR executive for a Fortune 500 company. I was surprised to hear this rant from the ordinarily mild-mannered reporter, and said so. “Don’t get me wrong,” he explained. “I have nothing against PR people in general, but that guy’s just a propagandist — I can’t believe a word he says!”
The next time you set out to tweet, blog or add to your corporate Facebook fan page, keep that lesson in mind. Skip the sales pitch, be candid, simple and straightforward without seeking gain. In so doing you’ll be in “perfect pitch” with your followers.
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