Why your social media sales pitch is a big old turn-off

Just posted another great “buy our stuff” thing to Twitter/Facebook?

Did it have a lovely, well-designed (and correctly-sized) graphic with it? Attention grabbing text? Incentive? Website link?

Fantastic!

NOBODY CARES.

I spend a lot of my time boring my colleagues to death by reminding them that they need to think like their customers. I’m taking the sighs and eye-rolls as a positive sign that they’re listening.

Think about it, though. When you’re on your favourite social media platform on your phone, you might occasionally read (or even click-through) a promotional post that really matches your needs. But I bet you scroll past the vast majority of them. Even if you work in a marketing department. You know how much time and effort has gone into getting just the right image, messing around with font sizes, agonising over getting your message across in the shortest and most effective way… but you still scroll past. You monster.

OK, fair enough. We accept that, don’t we? Most of what we do gets ignored. Fact. Some of my best cunning punning has barely had a Like, let alone a retweet.

But here’s the thing – think again about that occasional purge you do. You know the one. The footy’s a bit boring and tidying up who your follow is still more exciting than baking a cake, cutting the grass or meaningfully interacting with your significant other.

In a world where you feel powerless (even the kids gets more say in what happens today than you do) and the latest baffling Covid-19 restrictions have you head-scratching so severely you risk brain damage, you can at least wield your social media axe and bin off some of the accounts cluttering up your timeline.

That F1 driver? Turns out you don’t want to see pictures of him looking effortlessly cool at a fashion show or driving a £1M supercar for kicks. Click. Gone. Ahhhhhh.

That guy you interacted with once after he said something complimentary about your filtered picture of an ice cream? He retweets a lot of stuff from people with questionable viewpoints. I didn’t come here to have my way of thinking challenged! Click. Gone. Oooo. That felt good.

That brand I followed because I liked that thing they make, but endlessly post about their products and nothing else. Boring! Stopped looking at them months ago. Click. Gone. Mmmm – tingly!

And, just like that, you, your hard work, AND any opportunity to engage with them is gone.

So what do the fickle public actually want from you? Well, you should know – after all, YOU'RE ONE OF THEM.

What are the brands you happily keep on following doing? Not trying to flog you stuff all the damn time, that’s what.

They’re posting stuff about their team, their team’s pets, their company’s values, charitable stuff, how they recycle, their views on things, funny stuff, articles you actually want to read about, subjects related to their products, customer’s comments and feedback, fab pictures and video clips…

They’re being social. On social media. Blimey.

And it means you feel an attachment to them, a warmth that builds over time. Interesting content. Fun content. Useful content. Content that answers your questions and helps you with your life. I wonder who I’m going to consider buying from when I need something they do? And yes, they do sometimes plug themselves, but it’s the exception rather than the rule.

You’re under pressure to get that sales message out there. But… yawn!... don’t forget that the ‘social’ bit is massively important too.

*colleagues sigh and eye-role some more. Screen fades to black*

(This post was written for LinkedIn, but hey - why should connection-hungry corporate-types have all the fun?)

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