Pitchers In Social Media – 1 Strike & You’re Out!

I’d like to share a little rant about pitchers in social media (and I’m not talking about baseball).

I had a friend request on my facebook account recently. The person found me through a marketing colleague so I figured that this guy would be fine to add as a friend…

NOT!

Soon after clicking the accept button I noticed Renegade Network Marketer and all sorts of other promotional stuff plastered through my facebook account.

This is the first time I have ever ‘un-friended’ a person on facebook so I was scrambling to find the button for that as fast as I could.

Luckily within about a minute I found it and he was gone…sheesh!

You see, the thing is, my facebook account is a social place. I have friends in there that I went to school with, friends from my wife’s church, family friends, family members and also marketing colleagues. This is not a place for advertising affiliate products or business opportunities, no way!!

A quick look through and you’ll find all my friends are talking about social things mostly; uploading pictures of family, talking about their weekend, a trip they were on, everything except business.

So why was I ticked off?

Think of it like this…

Mr so and so comes over to my party and says,

hey can I come in, your friends such and such said it would be cool if I did.

My response is oh yeah, she’s cool, sure come on in and join the party. Next thing before he has even introduced himself to anyone, he whips out the megaphone and shouts,

“I’m a marketer, a network marketer, come over here and let me sell you stuff!!”

I’m like, who the heck is this guy coming into my party and pitching crap to all my life long friends (well it’s not crap, Ann’s stuff is great).

They didn’t ask for it and most likely are not interested in it. You see next, these intruders say to your friends, hey I’m a buddy of Steve’s can I join your party too? Then they go in there and trash your friends house with their sales pitches.

Then my friends are like, dude, what sort of people are you hangin’ with? That guy you introduced me to was a jerk, just tried to sell me stuff!!

I’m sorry buddy, this is a party not a sales convention, you’re out!

Why am I telling you this?

Because social media is getting extremely popular and many people are catching on to the fact that it’s a powerful business tool.

In my opinion there is a right way and a wrong way to use social media in business – the above example is definitely the wrong way in my opinion.

If this guy wants to join any of my other social networks do you think I will accept him…no way!

Social media is like a party and at parties you get to know people. If over time a relationship develops were business becomes part of the natural conversation then that’s great, but there’s no need to force it.

Twitter is the same, some people go on there and just pitch stuff all day long, the community hates that. People on these networks are looking to interact with people that bring value not sales pitches. Networks marketers that bring the old 3 foot rule to social media will be avoided like the plague.

I recently made a welcome page for my Twitter profile so that when people clicked on my Bio link they would get taken to a video message from me introducing myself.

When people click on your profile link they want to know a little bit about who your are, they don’t want a landing page or a sales page, that’s not why they click. Why not give them what they want?

(My rant and an explanation of a better way to do things. Length 8:53)

What you’ll notice on my twitter welcome page is that I do talk about business and I also add links to my websites BUT when a visitor clicks on one of those links they know exactly where they are going, it’s not a tricky link that is misleading at all.

Think of it like this, I interact with people on Twitter which is like socializing at a party. If people are interested enough in what I’m saying then they are going to want to know more about me and more about what it is that I do.

In a real life setting they would come up ask me but on a social media site they will go to my profile page and click my bio link, it’s like the person saying tell me more about yourself Steve…

At that point in the conversation I don’t just shove a business card in their face and say, here’s where you can buy my stuff…no I talk a little about myself and mention work as well.

If the person shows interest than I may hand them a business card and say call me some time if you’d like to know more.

This “tell me more expression of interest” on social media is when they click my website links on the welcome page.

Do you see how it’s more natural?

I’m not presuming that they are interested in what I do and just send them there, I’m giving them that choice and that’s just the way people like it.

I know it sounds like pure commonsense but seriously, there are so many people out there getting it so wrong in my opinion.

They are totally alienating themselves from the community and giving the mlm industry a bad name while they are at it, it’s basically spam.

Well that’s my little rant for the day.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.