Give, Don’t Take – A Social Media Ethos
Any customer of Founders Media will know we aren’t massive on ‘selling’. While it may sound rich as social media is, for many, a sales tool, it’s not our ethos in the world of social media, and it’s not the ethos of many experience social media managers when it comes to social media marketing.
It all falls down to the way you view it.
You can view social media as a pure sales tool. A way to tell people (if anyone is listening) about your new offer, about your amazing sale.
Go the other way and, the odds are, you will have people listening. I believe you should rarely sell in your content, but instead depict the beauty, the lifestyle of your product/service through your posts. If you’re a shoe company, show people looking cool wearing your shoes. If you’re a hotel, show your lovely rooms, delicious food, and amazing location. Then, when you do offer a promotion on your trainers, or a special deal on your hotel rooms, people have already enjoyed a taste of what it’s like to wear your shoes or to stay with you. And, more importantly, they’re listening.
Iconic ‘social media guru’ Gary Vaynerchuk wrote a whole book on this ethos called ‘Jab Jab Right Hook’ which basically explains how if you give quality content/information/insight about your product/service/brand (a jab) so many times, when you do eventually ask for a sell (right hook), people trust you, believe you, and value your opinion, thus increasing the likelihood of a successful sell.
A mistake a lot of businesses make on social media is to just post a tacky banner about an offer with a load of horrible colours and too many words. It’s okay to post a (nice) banner, but not for every post. Who wants to follow and engage with a social media profile who post nothing but sales-pushing posts?
Prioritise value-adding content which makes the follower visualise themselves with your product/service, and sell from time-to-time by informing (not asking or pushing) followers of the best way to book, or your new offer.
I admit, like everything on social, this is brand-subjective, and also culturally-subjective. The hard sell works in some brands and some countries better than others. But regardless, social media works best when you add value first, and sell later. Try it and see notice the growth of both traffic and followers after a few months.
You’ll often find, on social media, people want to buy your shoes, or stay with you more after they’ve seen what it’s like to own a pair or to stay a night.