.jpg "Snake Oil Salesman from Ancestry.com")
Snakey Social Media Salesmen: Selling Questionable Cure-Alls for All Your Marketing Problems Since 2005
Preparing for our social media luncheon, I discovered an email in my inbox that made me pause. Like any less-than-glowing review, it immediately made me a little defensive. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that most people still need educated on what’s happening in the social media landscape. Not everyone is sitting around the online campfire, singing Kumbaya, and tweeting about the latest trend to hit the interwebs and sharing their unsolicited expert opinions on all things social media.
For those living in what we geeks distantly refer to as IRL, the business world is more challenging than ever, with marketing getting more and more competitive, complicated, and buzzword-laden by the minute. It’s no wonder that this person – who, by the way, I consider more of a colleague and peer, and less of a potential client for me to target (or some other scary word that proliferates predatory sales vibes) – felt certain there must be a “catch” to my invitation. And since education is such an important part of our business, I’ll be sure to clarify this in the future. Take a look at my response to this skeptical diner and let me know what you think!
——————————————————————————–
To: Sarah
From: Sally
Sarah, thank you for the info, sounds interesting. Must say it is a bit odd to be asked to pay $30 for you and Ami to sell your services to us! – Sally
———————————————————————————
To: Sally
From: Sarah
Hi Sally!
Thanks for your email. I’m sorry you couldn’t join us today. I’m also sorry if anything I said suggested our goal for the luncheon was to make a sales pitch. After chatting with you at the ABC Networking Club luncheon last month, I was under the impression you might enjoy/benefit from participating in a conversation about social media.
Your email was a good reminder for me that, for those of us immersed in the social media landscape every day, it’s quite possible we take for granted some of the principles that make it such a unique and impactful marketing phenomenon. These principles manifest themselves in best practices for social media engagement, which we all discussed this afternoon. Some of these include:
1. Creating genuine relationships both online and in real life,
2. Building trust with business partners and potential/current clients through transparent communications, open dialogue, and frequent conversations,
3. Sharing information (for free!) to educate members of your community without expecting anything directly in return,
4. And driving conversations and building a community of people around social media as a tool for our businesses so that we can all improve and prosper as business owners.
Ami and I are wrapping up the Powerpoint presentation and some handouts we had at lunch today and will make a summary available online ASAP. In the meantime, I’m attaching a couple screen shots of the worksheets we talked about as take-home resources to help create and implement social media strategies. These are obviously pretty high-level, but I think they help get the social media ideas flowing. When we get all the information compiled so you can see it all in context, I’ll be sure to let you know. I’d love to hear your feedback!
In today’s competitive every-gal-for-herself marketplace, I can’t say that I blame you for expecting a “catch” when it comes to events. Beyond covering our expenses, the main things Ami and I hoped to accomplish today were connecting some new networking contacts and sharing some best practices. I personally hope I can empower business owners to make the right decision if they find themselves in a situation where they feel pressured by a social media “snake oil” salesman using tired old methods to sell these marketing tactics that were created in defiance of that exact experience. Does that make sense? I see it happen all the time and, as you can tell, I’m pretty passionate about it! So, if you ever feel like chatting, I’m always excited to grab a coffee with you! … no strings attached. 
Thanks again for your email, Sally. I hope things are going well with your business. If you have any questions or if you need anything, please don’t hesitate to let me know! Hope to see you at another ABC Networking Club event soon!
Best regards,
Sarah
