{marketing} - stop selling your thing!
karen gunton
yes. this post is titled stop selling your thing. seems like a dumb bit of advice from someone who is trying to help people grow their little biz, right? keep reading. i don’t want you to stop selling your thing forever. just sometimes, in some places.
right now: i have 219 friends on my facebook profile, i like 161 facebook pages, i belong to 127 facebook groups, i follow 136 twitter profiles, i am on about 20 newsletter lists, and i have about 30 blogs i follow on my reader. and that is actually not that much (do you know you can have a maximum of 4000 friends on facebook? yikes!). and i haven’t even counted the online games people play... that adds a whole other element!
my point, and i do have one, is that i represent the average person on your feed. this is a lot of information passing across my laptop screen each day. and i am online pretty well all day, so i mostly keep up. but a lot of people are only online for an hour or so after they put their kids to bed. so you can imagine – if every post/tweet/update from a biz or a person is trying to sell us something, we are going to tune them out after a while.
i am actually pretty good at skimming over this constant information stream to find the good stuff. what is the good stuff? mostly when someone is sharing something helpful for free, but i also like stuff that is entertaining, newsworthy, informative, funny or shocking. and i am pretty good at recognizing the people/businesses that do this consistently and skimming over the ones that do not. (i am sure you do this with your own friend feeds on facebook, right?)
so here is my suggestion to you. stop selling your thing... constantly. instead, for every post/tweet/comment/update/email/etc. you send out to promote yourself (essentially trying to sell something), send out 5 that are the other variety: share some helpful tips, be funny or entertaining, pass on something you know someone would like, generate conversation and interaction, say thank you to someone who has helped you.
instead of being that annoying guy that just pushes stuff a person's nose so they will buy it, be that awesome guy that is helpful and funny and charming and helpful and kind and entertaining and helpful. yes, i said helpful 3 times – if you give away free, helpful, useful stuff consistently, you will remain on people’s radar. i.e. they won’t skim over your posts, they will stop to read every single time. just sayin’....
what do you think? do you agree or disagree? what kind of information do you like best from the people and businesses you follow? please add a comment below!
Reader Comments (6)
I totally agree with you. I have my own Ling's List FB fan, or like page as it is called now, and I try to post things that are relevant but not always about the business. It's very time consuming too, to find information suitable for my business and I must admit that a lot of times, it's easier just selling my products.
I like pages that have a variety of information. Sometimes even those that are absolutely irrelevant to the business, because it adds that personality to it. I get a glimpse of what the owner of the business or FB page is like by reading their posts.
So, thank you for a great reminder and such a useful information!
i agree - i think getting to see someone's personality it the best. and i also think it help to filter people, so that only your ideal customers remain. =)
I absolutely agree with you, Karen. I also receive tons of stuff to my inbox every day, and recently, I've realized that I delete the posts or newsletters from some people immediately without even opening them. Because I know it's either constant self promotion or the effort to sell something again. You've explained it very well. After a while, you get pretty good at detecting the motives of people. And the next step after deleting messages without opening is unsubscribing.
There's nothing wrong about selling. We all create products and services that we hope will be of good use to people and offer them. But building solid and genuine relationships comes first for me. If you do something really well, offer stuff that really helps people and if you work ethically, money comes anyway. But strong relationships based on trust, sincerity and understanding bring a deeper and long-lasting value.
that is so true! i was automatically deleting stuff from my inbox this morning, and i thought i might as well just unsubscribe. but then there are other emails, facebook posts and tweets i always stop to read word for word, because i know the person provides something of value to my life.
figure out what your ideal client needs (and hey, it might just be a good laugh once in a while!) then be the person that gives it to them every time.
I can understand about people unliking a page who successively post 10 of their goods in their wall at a time, i have learned that the hard way. As i used to post 3 items at a time at 3 different imes of the day and everytime i do it my fan count would drop a few. BUT i have realized recently and so far results have been proving it effective that if i post 1 item every 2 hours or so in a consistent manner, i am less likely to drop fans and likely to get more sales. My thinking is that if your 1 post doesn't interest people then they are likely to just skip it and move on to the next post in their news feed and are unlikely to remember that you have already posted something (considering how fast posts in your news feed go). You consistently do this until one of your post catches their attention and thats when you close a sale.
Thanks for a great article! I am trying to build my site through Facebook and blog. Since my shop name has my name in it, is it okay, do you think, for me to use it when I comment on blogs, assuming I'm staying on topic, have something constructive to say, and don't push my shop? There are some blogs that I like and I comment on, and it just seems a wasted opportunity not to have my shop name there. If I'm not going to mention my shop in the comments, how else will anyone become aware of it?