Twitter, Facebook and Social Marketing: You Get EXACTLY What You Ask For!
Earlier today, I inadvertently ended up being part of a live chat on the topic of promoting a venue (and business) online, through social media marketing.
A couple of the people present were ostensible twitter "experts" and were filled with various "media blast" ideas.
Orange lantana, near Sotogrande, Spain
I decided to "sit in" for a while, given that there's a group people currently busy trying to build a greater interest in Steem/Steemit via a lot of twitter activity: @nathanmars pushing for 1000 #Steem tweets a day; @jaynie with the #SteemTweets campaign and original Steem "evangelist" @stephenkendal with #promo-steem.
These are all good initiatives in their own way... we're part of the "Attention Economy," so we need to draw attention to ourselves.
Then the Red Flag Drops...
As ideas were being passed around, the notion of needing to "dumb it down" for twitter landed on the table.
"It'll appeal to more people, that way!"
Whereas I understand the underlying concern — we want a campaign to work and bring lots of new people — I saw that as something to definitely NOT do.
Cactus in bloom
In my perfectly blunt and "Politically IN-correct" manner, I pointed out that if you target your messages to reach more "dumb people" you are going to GET more "dumb people."
And — unless you sincerely believe that's your target market — that means you're basically pushing your efforts in the wrong direction... and you'll likely end up hating your results.
Although this particular dialogue was actually unrelated to Steemit, it reminded me of a point I have harped on about many many times here: If your entire focus in telling other people about our community is "make money!" then the crowd who responds to your marketing will be primarily motivated by making money... rather than "creating content," or "investing" or "building stake" or something else that might have been your primary objective.
Maybe that sounds like "Marketing 101" but it always amazes me just how oblivious otherwise intelligent people can be to this basic reality.
Red "Strawberry Flower"
Free Beer and BBQ!
As I said, I understand the allure... and I also know the immense drawing power of standing somewhere — literally and figuratively — and shouting "FREE MONEY!"
Pretty much any idiot can gather a crowd by doing that.
But what sort of crowd is it? What are they motivated by? Will they even give a damn about what you're really offering (from "salvation" to "running shoes"), once you've run out of the limited supply of free money? Or will they just pack up and move on to the next source of "free money?"
See where Steemit's little "retention problem" comes into play?
"Come Here for the Rewards! (Stay for the community)"
How many people actually paid attention to the second half of that?
Interestingly enough, quite a few of the people I know on Steemit who remain highly active after two years and more... precisely did NOT come here for the rewards.
I came here to blog, and I'm still here. The rewards are a fringe benefit — a delightful fringe benefit, but a "fringe benefit," all the same.
View towards the horizon
Let's Market... but Be Patient!
I'm all in favor of "taking Steem to the world."
But let's do so, sensibly, and with a measure of patience. It's easy to "fill the room" if you make big unsustainable promises... but you get no loyalty.
It's much better to allow something to build slowly, and keep growing it slowly, making sure it's really solid, as you go.
Do we have enough patience to do that?
I hope so!
Thanks for reading!
Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
(As always, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190214 15:40 PST
0900
I so agree, patience is the key and a steady growth wins the race.
I believe it does. But it requires the virtue of patience, which it seems very few people in this day and age possess.
I guess I feel the same way. I don't like the idea 'Yeah let's get on other social media to get more people on Steemit' It's that part of the reason most of us are here is to not be dumbed down? To have the open discussions, to learn to grow. With all of that it takes time and patience.
If it seemed like more of the purpose here was to grow the actual active user base, that could be done quite readily by getting 10,000 regular contributors to each "hand invite" three of their friends they are *personally acquainted with" as heavy social media users and content creators. But we have neither the tools, nor the underlying mindset to do that...
Very true. I know some of the witnesses and groups want to see the active user base grow. I know we all would like it to. Any of us who have stayed active for more than 6 months know we're not here to 'make' money even though it would be awesome, we're here for the interaction.
I call them numbers people. They think in numbers.
If 12% of the people who make an account stay active for at least a year; and I can bring 1000 people to the platform, 120 of them will stay for at least a year.
As if each person is 1 in a formula. So they go for the easy '1's.
Recruiting in prisons, securing access to the tech, jumping through all the hoops, and running training courses for the inmates would have 95% stay active for a year; but that's too hard.
Much easier to just spam hollow promises and take the 12%, actually now its 5%, sorry 2%.
I pretty much share that same underlying frustration @mattclarke. And it can be a really hard nut to crack... "back in the day," I often worked as a sort of go-between between product development and marketing, and those "numbers people" were constantly misappropriating the intent of things.
"Hollow promises" always attracts the lowest quality group of people seeking freebies, easy money and handouts. You get almost zero solid foundation from that.
Their categories are too broad.
Guns for example. All guns are guns. There's no distinction between guns that are destined to be used for evil and those which aren't.
Because a certain percentage of guns is destined to be used for evil, they assume that shrinking the total number of guns will reduce that small number; but then they shrink that sample size with policies which only take away the guns that were never going to be misused.
It's like saying that sex spread STD's; and since casual flings are hard to identify, we'll just reduce the total sex by forcibly separating all of the married couples (since we know who they are).
It does nothing to reduce the type of casual sex which spreads the STD's; but the numbers people just have one label for both.
Hi @denmarkguy, I hope Steemit grows slowly and steadily too with worthwhile people who want and like to be part of this blogging community long term.I find it very rewarding. I am very grateful for all upvotes whether they have steem power or not because it is about the support and recognition. It fills me with satisfaction.
@angiemitchell, at least the "good" news is that the long slow downtrend in number of active accounts stopped in December, and has been trending flat-to-somewhat-UP since then. So at least it would seem there's a small indication of movement in a positive direction. Let's hope it continues!
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