Social Media Marketing: A Personal Pet Peeve
I was browsing through the racks at Barnes & Noble one evening when this guy standing next to me strikes up a conversation.
Stranger Dude: “One of your parents is Japanese, right?”
Me: “Um, yes. My mother is.”
And so we talk a little bit. He was of Japanese descent and worked as an engineer at one of the local manufacturers in town. ‘Seemed like a nice enough guy. I though maybe he just struck up the conversation because we had something in common. Then he gave me his card and said,
“I’ve got this side marketing business that I’m starting. Give me a call sometime. Maybe we can meet and I can go over it with to you.”
I was instantly deflated. I think I might have thrown his card away on the way out the door because I knew that “marketing business” was code for Amway. They would never say it was Amway because the training literature told them not to, but it was still Amway.
Here is the problem with participation in most all Multi-Level Marketing; It forces you to turn every single one of your personal relationships into a mark, it reduces your friendships to potential clients, and it makes you look at strangers as revenue streams and not as human beings.
I’ve got to confess that many times I feel the same way about some people that I see marketing their wares on Social Media sites.
It’s not that I have a problem with people mentioning things about their business or throwing in the occasional link to something that they are trying to sell. What bothers me are the abusers; the ones that are on social media sites not because of the human interaction, but solely for the chance to make some money.
These people are easy to spot. They sign up for Twitter accounts and start out following over 1000 people before they make their first tweet. They never respond to a message unless they can throw a link in to something and they never disclose that they are getting a percentage of the sale on that new product they are recommending as the solution to your woes.
It’s all very schlocky and it has nothing to do with the spirit of community that is such a large component of what makes social media successful. It’s neither genuine nor honest.
It’s my belief that all good marketing tells a story and marketing online is no different. We get enough of “Buy now and change your life!” from the TV-Industrial complex. Shouldn’t Social Media be something different?
