Blog & NewsHow to Profit from NOT Selling Using Social Media (Part One)
It’s become a common question in virtually every industry:
“How do I use all this Facebook and Twitter and stuff to sell my product/service?”
In the end it turns out it’s not a complicated answer:
“Don’t.”
And the conversation continues:
“But I want to sell stuff. Selling stuff is what I do. When I sell more stuff it makes it easier to pay my mortgage and buy the good brand of underwear made from Silkistasium™. I can’t go back to wearing regular underwear now, so I need to sell stuff – and I want to use social media because I hear that it can be a really effective sales tool.”
“It is. It can be. The internet is the most powerful medium in history. It will help you sell a great deal more product, so long as you stop disingenuously selling and start having a genuine conversation with your audience.”
Of Diapers, DryMax and Dining
Pampers is using online advertising and social media to counteract potential fallout from suggestions that their new DryMax formula is causing severe rashes for some babies. And this may well turn out to be a lesson for them in how badly it can backfire when a company uses social media improperly.
Mistake #1: Tell People They’re Wrong
Neanderthal YouTube comments notwithstanding, when folks gather online around a particular subject of interest, say parenting, there tends to develop a fairly remarkable level of knowledge and varied expertise in those communities. Some of the ‘Mommy boards’ for example have a collective level of sophistication in issues affecting children that is staggering.
So if (hypothetically, of course) a social media marketer were to approach such a board, and in response to the allegations of DryMax causing problems, posts some information about what diaper rashes are, how common they are, and how often they occur, diaper brand notwithstanding, suggesting that what these babies are experiencing is perfectly normal, happens to every baby, and has nothing to do with any products . . . well, what that person is unintentionally doing is saying “you don’t know your own children. You believe that this product is causing a problem but you are mistaken. These are not the droids you are looking for.”
(Okay, maybe not exactly that last bit.)
If a guest of mine said something like this to me at a dinner party I’d likely tell him not to let the door hit him in the rear on the way out of my home.
And this is my essential point – the social web is a whole bunch of big dinner parties. If you want the other guests to consider buying your products, don’t walk in, introduce yourself, and pull out a vacuum cleaner and start espousing its patented Monsoon Sucker™ whirlwind action. You won’t sell any and you won’t be invited back.
And guess what? This is great news for good marketers.
Why? Because if you genuinely join the dinner party, and you genuinely are interested in the subject matter and you throw in a few jokes here and there and you genuinely have good stuff to offer, you will form real relationships with the other guests, and real relationships are pretty much the most powerful force on earth.
(Aside from Monsoon Sucker™ whirlwind action, naturally.)
Pampers DryMax may well be an exceptional product. These rashes on babies may well have been a coincidence. Even if they were not, and Pampers made a mistake, that’s okay! Every human and every company makes ‘em.
But if you spill a glass of wine at a dinner party, unintentionally of course, and then respond by saying that ‘dining room tables are often subject to wine spills and it cannot be known whether it was I who spilled the wine or not’ . . . well, it was really swell, had lots of fun, don’t hold your breath for an invitation to the next one.
Social Media | ctufts | June 22, 2010
marketing, Monsoon Sucker, Pampers, Slikistasium, Social Media
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Great piece! Especially comapred to the dinks and half wits that have benn writing about this.
Bahahaha. I am sure Carey must be really sick of being compared to dinks and half-wits by now.
Nice post. It summarizes neatly the things that Social Media can and shouldn’t be used. Now excuse me, but Slikistasium jockey’s need to be placed into the dryer.