A big mistake I see every day is businesses constantly pushing products and services down people‘s throats via social media. People are just trying to sell, sell, sell and do not seem interested in building relationships. This is old marketing and is equivalent to spamming and is quite annoying. To succeed online, it is critical the firm builds up social currency.
Social currency is the leverage one accumulates through their ongoing presence in social networks and communities. The idea is that by getting involved, creating a sense of community, and sharing ones knowledge and expertise with other users they create an identity, which is accompanied by trust and recognition.
As the firm creates its presence in a giving, influential way, over time it builds up significant social currency. In other words by enabling people to get to know, like, and trust the firm, eventually it earns the right to sell the people its products or services.
Just like anything worthwhile, this takes time, patience, and consistency. Firms should not expect to just show up and have everyone buy all of their products immediately. ‘Build up your social currency and earn the right to turn your product or service into money’. This is very important if a firm is in business for the long haul.
This brings me to a difference between the old world and the new world.
Old media = Push and pray
New media = Pull and stay
Companies used to spend a fortune with their marketing budgets and basically they would cover the whole marketplace with their message. They would (and some still do) push their products in people’s faces and then essentially they would pray that people would buy them.
In today‘s world, using the power of social media, we can do the opposite. By building up social currency and creating real relationships we can pull people into our world. Then, as long as we keep pumping out meaningful content, they will stay. People who are pulled in and stay also eventually will pay!
The push and pray approach is expensive and unpredictable. The pull and stay method is comparably cheap, costing mainly your time and energy, predictable (once you figure out how the game works), and leads to building relationships, which always equates to a sustainable business.
