Social media is not Black and White and all forms and styles can work.
Everyone has their own style, and you have to find yours – one that works for you and your business.
Also – remember that good marketing needs to grab peoples attention. But in Social Media – people often frown on the direct forward approach – so you need to balance the two.
A term I like is Passive Marketing. This article describes how to ‘‘market passively‘ in point number two. It has some other good points as well.
But what it does not do is talk about developing a personal style.
You see, people resist open aggressive sales tactics on social media for the most part. But they do not mind if it is done in a unique way, as part of an authentic style. If you are authentic, come across as real person building a business, caring about your customers – you can push the envelope on what you can do in promoting your business.
Many people think that social media should not be used to ‘Push’ ads out to people. Rather you should offer advice, gifts, etc as a way to help your prospects. And in that process you build relationships and from their you get clients.
This strategy works – but at some point you need to make an offer – give people a way to buy your stuff. This can be the tricky part, and if not done in the same ‘tone or style’ as your relationship building – can leave your audience annoyed.
Another part of every unique style online is the volume – you always have to be aware of how much exposure people are getting. Especially as you are using different social media tools. Some people will only see your message once, while others may see it many times – possibly overload. Even within a social media platform you can at times inadvertently overload certain people by posting in groups, commenting on friends, and your own posts. The people that are in those groups, have the same friends will see everything and may get overloaded. Facebook’s new Edgerank can compound this type of occurrence.