There's a marketing mindset that believes social media is a waste of time. These are the people who tend to say things like, “It’s not personal, it’s business.”

These are the same people who approach social media as an additional channel for their hard sell. You know the type: 

• They immediately DM you with a pitch for their product, their blog or their seminar as soon as you connect with them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn — or anywhere else, really.

• They offer you a “free” white paper in exchange for your contact info, then bombard you with phone calls and emails demanding an appointment.

• They invite you to a “free” 1-hour webinar where they refer to their (wildly overpriced) ebook no fewer than 14 times, and then follow up with three emails in three hours pitching said ebook—which you ceased to care about after the third mention.

What they don’t get is that the hard sell never actually worked to begin with. When you live and die by your quarterly results, always focused on the next three months instead of on the long-term, then you’re moving your product in spite of yourself. You may meet your quarterly goals, but if you haven’t built a relationship with your customer then you’re starting all over again the next quarter.

The outbound, always-be-closing, hard-sell marketing style is a dying dinosaur. Social media isn’t a new marketing gimmick, nor is it a passing fad. “Relationships first, business second” is actually the tried-and-true inbound marketing formula of the old-fashioned mom-and-pop store on Main Street.

The only thing that’s new about social media are the tools.

Ciao for now!

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Photo credit: “The Salesman” by Pete Williamson via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

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