Know-How Exchange : Social Media

Dear Leslie,

No.

Social media—as I'll contend until I gasp my last breath—is about being up front, genuine, transparent, and utterly personal.

Social media is NOT about automating anything. If you want to build a following of people who say: uhu, yeah, aha, um, wha?
then by all means, automate.

But if your goal is to build solid, valuable, long term relationships based on sustained and similar wants, needs, desires, likes, and TRUST, you've got to work at it.

Ask yourself this: would you feel all warm and fuzzy if a friend responded to your conversation via e-mail with a gaggle of non sequiturs? Or with responses that in no way, shape or form tie in with what you're thinking or talking about?

How about when you get home and the phone rings and there's a wee pause before an obviously recorded voice clicks in and says "Hi, THIS is a MESSAGE from your ..." and so on that's OBVIOUSLY a recording?

Might you feel compelled to chat with this machine, or listen to this person, or in any way enter into a dialog? Probably not.

I used to use an auto follow, auto respond system on Twitter.
But when I received auto responses, I changed my mind. And now, when I receive an automatically generated message, it gets deleted and the person sending it gets blocked or they get unfollowed. Often, it's both.

The watch words here are QUALITY, not quantity.

To build a list of quality people who are interested and actually engaged in what you're saying or offering is WAY more valuable and far more important that simply slinging out messages to the masses to see what sticks.

Here's a wee fact that many people are either ignorant of or simple don't care about: relationships take WORK.

All those offers that sound too good to be true are just that: too good to be true.

I've lost count of the spam I receive on Twitter that promises me
"Get 10,000 followers inside 30 days!" and normally, these BS tweets come from some moron who is following a few hundred people and is being followed by maybe half that.

This begs the question to the spammer "Hey, how's that working out for ya?"

You build a following on Facebook or Twitter the same way you build relationships the world over: over time.

This takes work. You have to offer valuable content. You need to be interesting. You need to help people. You need to offer value.
You have to CARE!

To become engaging and worth following of friending, you MUST offer value and you MUST come across as the real McCoy in terms of what you bring to the relationship.

This means you've got to be relevant, significant, compelling, salient, and interesting enough for people to actually WANT to get to know you and everything you offer, stand for, and can provide.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA
Follow me on www.twitter.com @GaryBloomer

Automation is not genuine and authentic as Gary suggests.

Gary has nailed it in his response to you. Forget the automated thing. Build relationships (a) one at a time, with people whose opinions and friendship you value, and (b) by offering legitimate, no-hidden-agenda help to people who ask for it.

If you are seen by your target group as a really competent and helpful individual, you will have gone a long way to building the kind of relationship that might turn into a sale for you one day. If you try to force it by being too pushy, you'll blow the whole thing.

See what your competitors are doing with Twitter and learn from them. Blasting messages is an easy process. Getting people to your website and buy from you isn't unless you've targeted them and understand their needs quite well.