Social MEdia is all about me

When I originally started to think about this post, the title above was not the one I had. I first typed in the title, “There is no me in Social MEdia.” The problem was I started to draft this post in my mind over two weeks ago and it has evolved just a little since then. The second problem was I had way too much time to think about this post while I was sitting on airplanes and in airports early this week. For whatever reason, I decided my original title was full of crap and my premise was completely ass backwards.

What is wrong with putting a little me in social media?

Actually not a damn thing. I could stop writing this post right here and now and be done with it. But, due to the fact me and many others have been hammering on the fact we should never consider what we get out of social media, I felt I had to explain what I am sure some of you are going to call an absurd idea.

If you really sit back and truly think about how you use social media and what you are trying to do with it, it really is all about “me”. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. For the sake of argument and this post, I am using the term social media strictly for tools like twitter and maybe Facebook. However, I am mainly talking about twitter.

You all know I am a huge fan of twitter and feel it is a valuable tool that every business or professional service firm should consider. Notice I said consider. I have never told anyone that everyone should use twitter. Just like I have told some they should not be blogging.

Used correctly, twitter can be a powerful tool. And in using twitter, there is no reason why you can’t consider, “Social MEdia is all about me.”

How do we shift gears and look at me and not you?

To move our mindset in a different direction we first need to consider for a moment what we are doing on twitter. Or, what are our goals using twitter.

Community Building – All of the self-proclaimed social media gurus have been telling us for the last 2 years we should be building our community. You need to try to connect with as many people as you can so your community grows and you can connect with more people. Are any of us really concerned with building everyone else’s community? No, and to think otherwise is just a bit self-absorbed. Think about it, how in the sam hell can we build other people’s community without building our own. We can’t. In simple terms, you and I are building our own communities so we can expand our own sphere of influence. Sure, in the process we are connecting with those who come to our community. And we see people in our community connect with others too. However, you are building your own community, period.

Is there anything wrong with this. Nope! You owe it to yourself to build your own community. For the sake of your business, your employees if you have them and your bottom line. You should be self-centered and build your community.

Build up our followers – I will admit this might be similar to building our community. However, I think the two are completely separate. While we may have a huge number of followers, there is simply no way they are all in our community. Followers in their true form are simply numbers. And whether we like it or not, we measure what we consider success by numbers. Just between you and me and the fence post, I have a goal of hitting 10,000 followers by the end of this year. You may be asking why and I can appreciate that. And, you will see where I am going with that in the next couple of points we will be making below.

First, we need to look at why we make such a concentrated effort in building our follower numbers. How many of you are building an email marketing list on your blogs? I hope all of you. And why are you building an email list on your blog? I hope you are doing this to build a list of people you can market your product or service to. If you are afraid to admit this, stop what you are doing and go work for “the man” in a cubicle somewhere. Seriously, there is nothing wrong with admitting your are both building an email list just like there is nothing wrong with building up followers on twitter so you can someday market to them. Someday!

You are building up followers for you and not for anyone else. This does not mean you have to follow them all back. And if you stop to consider that bit of advice we get daily. Not following everyone back is the most self-centered all for me approach to twitter there is. And there is nothing wrong with that either. Social media is all about me after all.

Promote our blogs and/or businesses – There is nothing more me-centric than self-promotion. And if you are not promoting your blog and/or your business you need to remember that cubicle I mentioned above. If we are going to shift gears and look at what is in it for me and twitter, promoting our blog post and/or our businesses should be one of your main focuses on twitter. One of them, not the entire reason you are using twitter.

Each and every time you write a new blog post you should let everyone on twitter know about it. You tell your followers and community and if you are working it right, they will tell their followers and community and on and on and on. Yes, you can make yourself feel better by telling yourself you are tweeting about your new blog post because you want to give your community and followers information. But, let’s get real. We tweet about our blog post because we are trying to drive traffic to our blogs.

Is there anything wrong with this? Nope! Because in the process of looking out for the me in Social media, you are going to help others too. By our very nature, we are going to promote other people’s blog post just like we promote our own. And in the process we are going to become known as a source of up-to-date information and content on twitter. Just like we are doing on our blogs.

Looking out for the me in Social Media by promoting our blogs and businesses will by its very nature help others too. Don’t be afraid to do it as often as you can.

Market our products or services – We now come to one of our main reasons for using twitter. Whether you want to admit it or not, if you are a business or service firm, you are in a marketing posture at least 95% of the time. There is too much competition to not be marketing. If we are honest with ourselves each and every one of us is always looking for a way we can market. And social media and twitter is no exception. Building a community, building up our followers, promoting our blogs and/or business is marketing. If you don’t agree, get over yourself and go grab that cubicle above.

David Bullock in a recent post made this statement where it concerns success with marketing:

Look for sales, transactions and valuable conversations as the measure for your success.

His point is that we all look at the wrong numbers. But more important for the sake of this post. You should be looking at sales and transactions as a “measure of your success.”

There is nothing wrong with marketing and to think other wise is really completely screwed up. Should you be marketing on twitter 95% of time, I don’t think so. If you do, you will not build a community or increase your follower numbers. Both of which are important to you. However, you should do some serious marketing on twitter.

Let me give you an example. I use twitter daily to connect with and market to those who are in my community and make up my follower numbers. I tweet about Headway a number of times each day. Is there anything wrong with this. Good god I hope not. Is this the only thing I do on twitter for my own benefit, no.

Remember those numbers we mentioned above. Why I want to hit 10,000 followers by the end of the year. Simply put, the more followers you and I have, just like the more subscribers we have to our email list, the more people we can market to.

Don’t be afraid to market on twitter to promote what you are doing.

Final Thoughts

Before you all go out and unsubscribe from this blog or unfollow me on twitter, there really is a method to my madness. There will be a followup post to this one where we will explain the ME is social media. We will explain how looking out for me in social media will really help others just as much. In the meantime, leave your comments and thoughts on what we talked about above. Let’s keep the conversation going.

Cathy Ribble

Grant, this is a great post, and you have embraced what many are afraid to say! Part of the Twitter-life is about ME, and there is nothing wrong with that. But, it's also about others! As with most things in life, finding that magical balance is the key. Great information!

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Ken

I agree marketing is invariably about me -- why else bother? The trick with social media marketing lies with using subtle diplomacy, making the me linger in the background rather than the foreground, enough to be noticed but not too obtrusive. It's like a hint of perfume will leave a better impression than having it be overpowering. Better to have people notice you because they find themselves gravitating in your direction, then recognize you as someone to be avoided.

Joel Williams

I've personally never been bothered by your Headway promotions, if you ever follow any actor on Twitter, 50% of the time it's about their new show, or people they're working with and it's simple self-promotion. There was a post on chrisbrogan.com (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/stop-talking-about-y...) about the ratio of tweets that were about yourself. While not quite the same I wondered why people are following you on Twitter if they don't want to hear about you? It's about what you're doing, what you're selling, what/who you find interesting and re-tweet or alert people to. Even if you don't mention yourself or your products, it's all about you regardless, it can't be anything else.

T.Marie Hilton

Like anything, social media is all about balance. I hate to say it, but if I see that all you do in your twitter stream is ReTweet links 'to benefit your community' I'm probably not going to follow you. I want to follow and interact with real people on social media. That means I want to see a mix of helpful information, your personality (yes, even if it's what you're cooking for dinner) and ::gasp:: what you have to offer, a/k/a your marketing.
If you don't sell yourself who will?
That said, be mindful of the way you market, there is difference between marketing yourself and spamming your followers.
Love this post Grant!

Grant Griffiths

Thanks. I just wish the so called self-proclaimed social media gurus would start to realize they are doing a disservice condemning marketing on social media tools. Marketing done right can have a profound affect on a business or a blog. And it can all be done tastefully too.

Name unavailable

I agree I am getting sales from twitter and I am not even being tasteful about it.....my niche is a little different. I need to be aggressive , sometime you need to slap someone to wake them up!

glendoncameron

Nice piece dude, marketing is like breathing if you not doing it all of the time you are dying. I think we are at a point where people can appreciate honesty.

Thanks Chris. I just checked the Share on buttons and they seemed to work for me on my Mac and Firefox. I will check into that further.

genuinechris

You take care of your health first so you can be in a position to be of service when called upon. You build your skills to be helpful. Right? Right.

You can't be of service to others unless you excel.

When the plane is going down, momma puts her own oxygen mask on first SO she stays alert long enough to save baby. Is that selfish?

(BTW: Mac/Firefox: the "Share on" buttons don't work i hover over to click and suddenly I can't)

Hey Angel - Thanks. I just wish more of the social media gurus would be honest with what they are telling their own audience. Why should we be afraid to call it what it is and it is marketing.

Thanks Michael. I for one am tired of the so called social media gurus blowing smoke up our butts with their feel good social media thinking. It is time bloggers and businesses start being honest with themselves and look at what we do as what it is. It is marketing.

remarkablogger

I'm with you 100% on this. I especially like how you draw the distinction between community and followers. They are indeed not the same.

Blog Angel a.k.a. Joella

You know a lot of people are ego-phobic. I use to write resumes professionally and I found that many of my clients we're incapable of "blowing their own horns". Many of us have it ingrained in childhood to blend into the background and to learn how to be humble.

Self-promotion is necessary in blogging just as it is in resume writing. If you don't put yourself out there it's likely no one else will either.

Time to let ourselves be at least a little proud of ourselves, our accomplishments and our blogs. Thanks for putting this out there, I hope more people realize how important it is to to the "me" in social media.