I remember about 7 or 8 years ago, shortly after the peak of Facebook. I was just shy of 26 and ready to reinvent myself. I had just left the fancy corporation I'd been working for the past several years in an attempt to be a self-starter (as my dad called it). The entrepreneur blood ran through my veins. I'd spent my life watching my parents, both successful business owners, set their own schedules and set their own wages and I wanted in. My experience was in print marketing and design, but I was ever aware of the potential digital marketing presented.
Keep in mind this was before Facebook became a public corporation. Before viral marketing was monetized. In the beginning, Facebook was an open source playing field where content was liked and shared organically. The word organic doesn't even exist in today's online arena. So, like any novice would, I wanted to capitalize on this organic exposure.
I created a Facebook page, website and began blogging. When Twitter came along, I jumped on that bandwagon too. Before long I had my first few clients and was slinging content across cyber platforms faster than professional baseball pitches. My clients businesses were gaining more awareness and growing. They were happy and I was happy they were happy.
After almost a year of this. I received an email from someone who had been following me on Facebook. In this email I received the very best advice I have ever gotten in my professional life. It changed me almost immediately and I have benefited from it ever since. This near acquaintance proceeded to tell me that I didn't truly understand what social marketing really was and that I was going about it all wrong. How could that be? Here I was, clearly successful. My clients were ecstatic. I was so busy I was having to turn people away. I created my own schedule and was getting paid what I wanted. Finally. How could I have it ALL wrong? Except, I did.
Here is what I have since learned: Social marketing is about building relationships. It is about investing time in creating an engaging brand. You need to be just as good of a listener as you are a good talker and you need to share meaningful content, not just share for the sake of sharing. This kind of marketing takes time to grow, just as you would grow an in-person friendship or business relationship. It is a give and take and there is an exchange of trust that occurs. With so much information overloading our screens daily, meaningful content is more important today than ever before. Today there are geo-targetting tools that can help us initiate conversations, but once that initiation takes place it is up to us to remember that social marketing is a two-way street and that actively listening to the voice on the other end of the line makes all the difference.
