Customers Hate Your Lack of Personality

by Samir Balwani on December 24, 2008 · View Comments

I want to let you in on a little secret of mine. Are you trying to exploit social media to get people to buy your products? Is the only interaction on Twitter, you telling people about your store sales? Well guess what, you need to rethink your social media strategy.

Social media is not about your marketing efforts, and people will care very little about what you have to say if you continue this route. Want to use social media effectively? Create a personality, be a person, recommend sales that actually matter, tell people about products that are actually good. Be transparent, be honest.

comcastcarestwitter

Social media is about people connecting and people will have little care for your blatant marketing efforts. If you plan to spam your users, don’t expect a large following. Instead build a relationships, be friendly, and make friends, and you’ll see your profiles go viral.

Large brands always amaze people when they act human. When Frank (@comcastcares) gave Comcast a personality (someone who cares and is willing to the extra mile to make sure your problem is fixed), the brand saw a change in sentiment. Although, the negativity still lingers, Frank’s efforts have not gone unseen.

Earlier this week I wrote a post about small businesses and social media. I talked about how small businesses shouldn’t waste their time using social media because they already have the relationships larger companies are trying to build. That’s you… the larger company trying to build a relationship.

So remember, would you want to be friends with someone that called you every few hours to tell you about a sale that didn’t really matter to you? Introduce a personality, talk about what you like and don’t hesitate to move away from business. Showing a human side can lead to higher trust in consumers, and over time add weight to your recommendations. Subtlety is key in recommendation marketing.

Do you have examples of companies using social media wrong? How about the worst person to follow on Twitter? Leave a comment, share your thoughts.

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John W. Bosley/JBMovies December 27, 2008 at 10:24 pm: Thanks for writing the article. I found the information very relavent for marketing. This should be something everyone should read before using Twitter, Facebook or any other form of social media. Thanks again.
Daiv Russell December 27, 2008 at 10:44 pm: Samir,

I have mixed feelings on your points. I absolutely agree that large companies have a tendency to suck at delivering customer service – a social media outlet would absolutely provide an ability to counter that public image.

On the other hand, I disagree that small businesses should avoid social media because they already have these direct relationships. In certain business models where the business owner has less interaction with the client, or in those where the owner is truly a “business owner” and not just an employee of his own company grinding away at the 40, 60, 80 hour work week – there’s an absolute opportunity to stay in front of your clients and prospects through social media. It’s just a matter of finding the right way to leverage the tools.

- Daiv http://www.Twitter.com/DaivRawks
Samir Balwani December 28, 2008 at 2:02 am: @John Thanks for reading my blog, and leaving a comment. Hope you’ll keep commenting and join the community.

@Daiv The problem with small companies using social media is that your success is very public, but so are your failures. An example what I mean is, consider how only 9 members have joined this blog’s MyBlogLog, or only 4 members are in the Google FriendConnect. These things could be potentially embarrassing for a business. Low numbers, to consumers, can equate to low trust. This blog isn’t paying my bills, so I’m not out asking users to join, or am I taking the time to create a strong launch for these communities, but businesses would be forced to do that. It takes time and in the end a small business owner could use his or her time more wisely doing something else.