Don't Break the Glass to Improve Social Media (photo credit:© Vanessa Fitzgerald)
There’s been a rash of people acting irrationally. Just last week in Orlando a family on vacation received an early morning phone call to their hotel room.
Someone claiming to be from the front desk told the sleepy vacationer who answered the phone that there was a gas leak at the resort and he needed her to break the window in the room. Her husband leapt into action, breaking the window, and then proceeding to follow her relayed instructions to break the mirror, knock a hole in the wall, and then throw the mattress out the window. He was just moments away from having the whole family jump, supposedly to safety, when the real hotel manager arrived on the scene, responding to complaints about the noise coming for this guest room.
Okay, you are sitting at your computer thinking, “Who would be so malicious as to make this call, and who would be so foolish as to follow the instructions?” Break a window; why not just open a door? Why break a mirror at all? And as to the man in the adjacent room, who you were supposedly rescuing by knocking a hole in the wall, why couldn’t he just exit via his door, as well?
All good questions now, but clearly in the heat of the moment, the phone caller was sufficiently convincing to cause the woman to believe him so completely that she convinced her husband (a Sheriff’s Deputy, by profession) to carry out what now seems like highly ludicrous acts.
When Good Business People Go Wrong or What to Do When Your Business is Leaking Gas
The problems here sound amazingly similar to the things that can go wrong in internet marketing. What is it that about some blogs and websites that makes them sufficiently convincing to cause otherwise intelligent businesspeople to follow poorly conceived directions on how to market and how to use the tools of social media?
Using social media marketing is very important to your business. But taking the wrong advice, without thinking things through and checking them out, is tantamount to breaking a mirror in the event of a gas leak. Not only will it do nothing to alleviate the gas leak (real or imaginary), but it is a waste of time, effort, a perfectly good mirror, and it could even lead to seven years of bad luck. Social media marketing done badly probably does more damage than failing to do it at all.
3 Important Thoughts on Your Social Media Marketing for Your Business
- Do not follow the advice of overnight gurus on the subject of social media.
- It is important to get involved in social media, but you have time to think things through. There is NO GAS LEAK.
- Take a little more time and plan your strategy rather than follow haphazard advice and jump. Other types of business marketing rules don’t necessarily apply here. Learn about New Media before you leap.
To find out more about the effects of bad social media marketing gone wrong join Mark Eldridge and Elsom Eldridge III, as the Social Media Academy consultants present the results of their study on corporate social presence in the marketplace. The free webinar will be on Wednesday, July 22, at 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (that’s 16:00 GMT and Noon Eastern time), click here to learn more: Citrix/Webex Social Media Case Study.
(photo credit © Vanessa Fitzgerald)
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Good key points. A proper plan, mapped out with care and attention to detail will always triumph over rushed choices and decisions. It’s something that we like to emphasise and spend a lot of time on. If you get the initial phases of a social media marketing campaign right, all the rest will follow in kind.