It’s Time to Spread the Awesome
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Tuesday night, a few Atomicdusters gathered with fellow social media enthusiasts at The Duck Room for a presentation by Scott Stratten, or as most of us tweetaholics know him, @unmarketing.
Scott is an expert in viral, social and authentic marketing, a blend that he calls ‘un-marketing.’ It’s about establishing yourself as a trusted expert, building relationships and being authentic. He’s also the best-selling author of ‘UnMarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging’, which many of us picked up (and got signed) last night.
The event, presented by Social Media Club St. Louis and Gateway Interactive Marketing Association, focused mainly on social media and offered up plenty of anecdotes and advice from Scott. Here’s some of our favorite tidbits…
People don’t share ‘meh’. And that’s why your content, be it a blog post, a tweet or an email newsletter, has to be awesome. When was the last time you passed something along that was ‘just mediocre’?
His best SEO advice? Write great freakin’ content. Sure, cleaning up your metatags and titles is nice, but when you start obsessing over how many keywords and links you’ve forced into your blog post, you’ve gone too far. Write what’s relevant. Write what you care about. Write awesome.
You say, ‘My audience isn’t on Facebook.’ Really? Is your audience ‘people’? The reality is half a billion people are using Facebook. And it isn’t just the ‘kids’ anymore. In fact, 45% of Facebook users are older than 26 and the fastest growing demographic on the site is women over the age of 55.
Replying is the secret formula. Social media, and business in general, is about building relationships. So it is no surprise that 75% of Scott’s tweets are replies. It isn’t about broadcasting anymore, it’s about conversation and engagement.
Stop trying to have presence without being present. Setting up an account, posting a couple messages and then leaving isn’t going to get you an audience. Setting up an autobot to post messages, or worse, connecting your Facebook and Twitter (and Linkedin) accounts isn’t going to work. You have to be there. You have to put in the time. Which leads us to…
It’s work. It’s awesome work, but it’s work. Contrary to popular belief, social media success doesn’t happen over night. You don’t set up an account, send a tweet and triple the traffic to your website. Building a presence on social media takes a lot of time and effort.
Take a stand. Be yourself. You don’t have to justify yourself to others. Scott was dishing this out as a defense for authenticity online, but isn’t it true for real life too?
Pi is the greatest pizza in the world. Bring it, Chicago. ‘Nuff said.
Danielle Hohmeier writes about marketing and design in the digital world for Atomicdust, with a focus on marketing convergence and social media.
