Age of Social Media Telemarketing: Why Social Media Sucks

Back in December, a friend of mine finally decided it was time to get rid of her little old car and move on to something a bit nicer.

So she went to a local Lexus dealership.

What comes to your mind when you think of Lexus cars? Maybe prestigious, expensive, quality, upscale.

That’s what she thought anyway. To her surprise, she was faced with a pushy Lexus salesman who tried to pressure her into buying a used Lexus for more that the price of a new car was. He told her that she should be happy with the deal and needed to sign the papers right there and then or the deal would be off. What “deal”?

Needless to say, my friend walked away without a car, feeling like somebody just puked all over her.

Well, that’s exactly how I feel with social media.

I came to Twitter a couple of months ago hoping to see a lot of smart people sharing great marketing ideas, having interesting discussions, cultivating productive networking atmosphere.

What did I see instead?

Pushy salespeople that make me feel like somebody just puked all over me.

Entrepreneurial “leeches” who want nothing more than to spam us repeatedly with their auto-updates created to shove their opportunity or service down our throats.

Why don’t they see it? Three reasons come to mind:

1. Old school door-to-door salesmanship is faced with new school way of doing business online – bringing old habits (hype, salesmanship) to the new world of attraction marketing.

2. Lack of understanding that get-rich-quick advertising and hype equals spam in everybody’s eyes and equals 60% of new Twitter users won’t return to Twitter the following month. (according to Nielsen.com).

3. Branding misconceptions: we are being conditioned that we need to promote our company, sponsor, product, team, etc. The louder we shout the better we are told. And we do it because we don’t know any better. Because nobody tells us that when we start our own online business, it’s OUR business, so we need to market OUR business and OURSELVES.

The purpose of your social media efforts has to be more than sending random “buy my widget” or “make money by signing up now” messages set on auto-repeat every 15 seconds.

That’s akin to social media telemarketing.

It’s offensive to the very people who you need to trust you, causing you to quickly lose credibility and thus the ability to positively impact people along with it.

Let’s talk about Twitter etiquette that we wish was more widely used:

1. Don’t Over-Promote

It’s true that most people use Twitter to promote something: their views, ideas, and of course, their businesses and products. But if that’s ALL you do, don’t waste your time.

A little self-promotion and a lot of value will take you a lot farther. You can scream “Buy from me” all you want, nobody will hear.

2. Content Is King On Twitter As Well.

Add value in your tweets – however short they are. If you are constantly tweeting one-two word tweets like “oh really” or “interesting”, your followers will get bored.

If that’s what your response needs to be to a particular tweet, then just send the person a direct message.

3. Automated messages.

People hate getting that type of messages and will unfollow you in an instant. Here is my favorite:

“Hey, thanks for following me. I sell dental plans. Here is my website.”

Instead, focus on your follower and not yourself, ask them a question, engage them in a discussion.

Stand out from the crowd.

4. Watch Your Ratio.

If you are following 2000 people (or tweeple, as they also call them) and are followed by only 2, you will most likely be seen as a spammer. Actually, if that’s the case, you ARE a spammer; we would all love it if you crawl under the rock and never come back to Twitter again!

5. Space Out Your Tweets

Avoid sending twenty tweets an hour – it’s annoying and people will stop paying attention.

6. Size Does Matter

Stay within 140 characters of the tweet, avoid sending several tweets to complete your thought. Nobody wants to go through pages of a tweet.

Always think of your followers! If you have that much to say, make a blog post and send them a link. This way you will kill two birds with one stone – make a tweet and send traffic to your blog.

Whatever online business you are in, always remember that every word typed online adds to the perception or misperception of you by others, which directly affects your credibility.
So make sure every word adds to the strong foundation of your business. After all, people buy from someone they like and trust. Become that kind of person and your customers will find you. That’s called “Magnetic Sponsoring”.

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