This is a wild one! Getting a return on your promotional investment in Social Media has traveled back in time to the Wild, Wild West.
My great Granddaddy was the Sherriff of Custard County and I’m channeling his essence. Because boy, do I have something to say about Social Media, ROI, upholding a standard and some good, country-style honesty.
Let me explain:
Last week, I heard a lot of fast talk from someone who claims to know how to make lots of sales using Social Media; Big macho–he really must sell a lot –right?
Well, I bought it. He had me tied right up in a ball and left me out here with the tumbleweeds.
So, feeling rather glum that little ‘ol me was not so cool as the big tough cowboy, I decided to improve my aim. I grabbed me one of them e-courses, figuring I’d learn new tricks to rope in the Social Media Sales.
Well, I found nothing new. Until I discovered this lazy cowhand was teaching how to do chain letters in Facebook to generate ROI for Social Media!
Naïve, I didn’t even know what a chain letter was. So I went to a site called “Urban Legends”. Lo and Behold! There I found the chain letter my friends had just passed along on Facebook! Turns out, that chain letter that really pulled the heart strings of some sweet ladies but, was a just a gimmick. In the name of real people with their life and death stories, here was this damn, dishonest sales gimmick.
Then I discovered the spammers who are allowed to lie to generate backlinks.
Now, that got me riled enough to tie on my chaps and pack some heat. But there’s more:
My next discovery was that famous Macho guy … was not selling anything at all! As it turns out, his business is based entirely on investments. Nothing wrong with investments for your great idea, that but it does not qualify him to advice me on ecommerce, which is what he was doing. And of course he has 25 Twitter Accounts per client and is continually getting kicked off the social networks for spam activity.
So here is what I have to say: “Hey, Boys: Social Media ROI is not so hard that you have to frighten the women and the children about it, just to make some money! It is really not requiring you to ‘buck the system’ or go shootin’ crazy over here! If you have something valuable to sell, people will want to buy it. Follow the standard principles of marketing and apply them to social media. I reckon all of you –all are going to fall in line now and start doing it right.
“Otherwise, you are going to end up with the big law raining down on your Internet party charging you for every damn thing and boy, you are not going to like it.” Big law is already moving in and you ought to be spending your time protecting your rights to sell honestly not trying to make a fast buck at the expense of innocent women.”
Now, I don’t think most social media marketers are like those guys.
But you can take control and develop a very good scene here by demanding people take some pride in the profession and do it right. People who are doing these things should be pushed into right livelihood, by not signing up for silly programs but instead demanding real communication. It’s not hard to learn.
And by the way, I make sales too. It’s not hard – it’s plain and simple. So let’s get going and get real.
