Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 : Business

One thing I’ve been noticing lately, that’s beginning to bug the hell out of me, is the use of the Social Media Market to Advertise via Social Arena applications and methods. Not only is this disturbing, it’s dangerous for what you’re marketing, and if you’re doing it - stop it, you’re clogging up my Internet.

Advertising vs. Marketing

Ok, here’s the deal. You have a great idea, you think it’s awesome and you can’t wait for the world to find out about it. Naturally you go straight to your friends and brag, that’s a given, but then you take it a step further and attempt to gain more exposure by SPAM ramming it to the whole Social Arena… You’re now Advertising in our space.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but, Social Marketing is about social connections and creating a good network of friends that are knowledgeable and like to share their findings. Occasional items, such as this post, are fine to self-share on the Social Network, mainly because they’re written to share an opinion or a finding - and let’s face it, a blog is part of a social network (see below).

Marketing turns Advertising when:

1. The blog you’re writing is primarily used to generate revenue, market products or services, or brag about generating revenue from marketed products or services.
2. The items you share are geared at generating leads, anonymous traffic, and/or additional credibility in efforts to gain revenue, or become some web-based money making machine of some sorts.
3. You’re not typing to friends as much as you’re selling your self to a “target market” (the bastards that taint the arena with this kind of drivel are the worst, in my opinion)

Blogging and Actions

Actions, kids. There was a brief discussion yesterday on Twitter about how to “market” thyself on the Internet more better to get more exposure. Sean Bonner (@seanbonner) and Dan (@viss) pretty much summed it up with “Actions speak louder than words”… meaning, if you want to be an impacting individual in the Social Arena? DO SOMETHING AWESOME. Write a killer web-application, make some blog posts that are chalk full of totally rad ideas that put a new spin on things, become a resource that OTHERS WANT TO SHARE.

That way, you don’t have to brag about your input, and hey then you’re not advertising, and the Social Arena is marketing for you. Job well done.

We are not a Target Market

I’ve seen this … a LOT. Some new ass savvy dork discovers the Social Arena, Blogosphere, or some Social Network, and decides that this is the new California Gold Rush. They gear up to meet us, go to our meetings, hand out their business cards, moo-cards, and whatever else cards they can to make them appear part of our group, and simply… abuse that social “in” with us in efforts to get our clicks, and turn our dollars into theirs.

Now, I’m not saying - “new people, don’t come to our stuff, they’re OURS!!! RAAAH!” - not even close to that. But if you do come to our things, keep your greedy bullshit to yourself and try to use your newly found awesome connections to better yourself, better your connections to awesome, and when the time is right, and you have something awesome - we’ll be here to listen to your newly discovered rad… and we’ll share it with others that we know will love it… Just do the same for us when we do it too.

Cheers, folks.