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Tag: internet marketing

Are You Too Focused on “Positive” Feedback Online?

All for the ‘Gram!

(The video below is NSFW/K due to language)

If you watched the video above or listened to Arizona Zervas’ “Roxanne,” you heard at the very beginning that he does things only for Instagram, because of who loves “the ‘Gram.” 

Arizona is not alone. There are countless social media users who post strictly for the positive affirmation they receive in response to the things they post. There are some fitness gurus that post selfies to show off their best physical assets, knowing that the “after” means more likes on an image than the process that led there. Others will post cute photos of their children and pets to receive the good feelings that come with the likes.

When they post other types of content on their accounts, the internet “love” just doesn’t arrive in the same way. Their followers take notice of the less popular posts and don’t interact, yet jump on the bandwagon when a post appears to be doing well. 

“Likes” Are Seductive

As a content creator, the pull of positive “feedback” is strong. It FEELS good to have your community giving you a like. Here’s why you don’t want the like for the rush it gives you:

  • The real feelings of your audience lie in what they have to say in the comments. It’s easy to tap, while it takes more effort to form a real thought and share it with you. 
  • Social media is about being social, and a like isn’t as social as the conversation your post should generate. You should want to start those conversations about you and your brand, as you’ll truly engage the raving fans in your community. 
  • You are more likely to fall into the trap of posting for the “likes,” rather than sharing your real, authentic self and brand. You become a slave to those likes, posting puppies or showing skin, rather than sharing what you actually want to say. 

This is an opportunity for you to stand out from what everyone else does. It’s your chance to zig when they zag. You can use that differing approach to find your tribe, aka the people who really understand and relate to you. 

Find Your Tribe & Engage

When you find and engage your tribe, your raving fans, or whatever you want to call the community who actually supports you, their attention is more valuable than those outside it. We seek that attention, remember?

The community you build is filled with the people who support you. Their love for what you do and the value you add to their lives will attract more people like them to you. Seth Godin calls this the smallest viable audience, and they will be an extension of you… An evangelist of your brand. Doesn’t that sound more valuable than a bunch of likes on a post?

Market Your Business The Way Jalen Hurts Plays

Sticking to your content and social media marketing strategy, even when you don’t see immediate results, leads you to build an authentic, caring, and long-lasting community.

Over the weekend, college football saw an awesome and unlikely comeback where the University of Oklahoma, led by Jalen Hurts at quarterback, overcame a 25-point deficit to defeat undefeated Baylor University, 34-31.

The outcome for the Oklahoma Sooners, on the road against a conference foe with something to prove, reminded me of how it feels when you embark on the challenge of marketing a new venture online. Their response to stay in the game, keep working their gameplan, and make the adjustments necessary to overcome a situation that would paralyze many other teams looks like what many side hustlers who use internet marketing to build their business face.

At the beginning of your internet marketing journey, you’re starting from scratch. You have no content and no community, the two things you need to be effective in marketing your business or venture. In addition to starting at zero, you see your industry peers, prolific marketers, and the latest internet-famous meme zooming ahead with their established brand and content. It can be discouraging to see them share their successes, their engagement online increase, and the results from their past efforts as you create the “starter” content in the pre-launch days and early in your marketing calendar.

Build Your Community

As you build your community and add to your initial content, you don’t feel glamorous because you don’t even get the satisfaction of seeing small wins or momentum. Like in Saturday’s game, the competition seems to be unstoppable and out of reach, going up by 25. Everything they do is golden, while you dwell in the inertia of the pre-launch activities.

Those early weeks and months feel like an eternity as you don’t see visible progress in the metrics of contacts added to your CRM, follower counts, or engagement online. Content and social media marketing isn’t something to expect an immediate gain from or to be an instant answer for your business. It should be a part of building the community that supports it, and communities take time and care to build to reach the sustainable and engaging direct access to what your customers think about you.

In business, we don’t play a finite game with a singular opponent, but our lives are filled with wins, losses, and the payoff of success. Sticking to your content and social media marketing strategy, even when you don’t see immediate results, leads you to build an authentic, caring, and long-lasting community. That community will be there to support you and to keep you in business long after you’ve hit “Enter.”

Hard Work and Resolve

As those who watched Saturday’s game witnessed, when hard work and resolve to stick to the plan meet, momentum builds. As it does, you see results in the “little things,” and eventually, you prevail.

Even when you feel like you’re down 28-3 as Oklahoma was early in the game, they persisted. As should you.

Tell More Stories

A very effective way to convey your message persuasively is to tell a story that offers a solution in action.

As we lead by example, we continue to demonstrate the principles we espouse.

By showing before we tell, we add credibility to our words.

When we listen, we understand the issues and outcomes important to those with whom we speak.

Now that we’ve demonstrated our principles, made ourselves credible, and understand the issues and outcomes, we can talk about our ideas.

It is very easy to jump to facts, figures, and studies to make the case for what we believe. Reason, logic, and philosophical principles are what likely grabbed our attention, but they are not particularly persuasive to those who are not yet on the same page in their thinking. So, how can we reach them?

Tell The Story

A very effective way to convey your message persuasively is to tell a story that offers a solution in action.

Telling stories helps connect the listener to details, important points, and outcomes that are not found in citing statistics and studies.

Think about the last time you went to an event where there was an in-depth Powerpoint presentation with lots of slides, filled with statistics, facts, and figures. You likely took copious notes to keep up with every last shred of data.

When you left the presentation, how much did you retain without those notes? And six months later? A year later? A decade later?

Very few adults are blessed with an eidetic memory, like Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, so recalling these details does not come naturally.

What’s something we all remember?

What We Remember

The stories we learned at a young age. Fables from Aesop, movies by Disney, and silly rhyming books by Dr. Seuss. Why do we remember, sometimes in amazing detail, something we heard, read, or watched twenty, thirty, forty or more years ago?

When did you last read or hear the story, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” one of Aesop’s fables?

If asked for a synopsis, we could easily give an accurate retelling of how the hare was beyond confident in his abilities to defeat the tortoise in a foot race. He was so confident that he sped off to an early lead and took a nap. When he awoke and hopped to the finish line, he found that the tortoise had beaten him by staying the course.

The lesson that we can all recite in unison? “Slow and steady wins the race.”

It’s probably been twenty years or more since I’ve heard that fable, but I remember what occurred due to the structure of the plot, characters, climax, and resolution involved in storytelling.

Twenty years ago, I would likely have been sitting in Chemistry class, but I don’t know that I could tell you what Avogadro’s number is or why it’s important, despite its repeated use.

If you’re interested in the science behind why storytelling is effective, here is an article about how stories activate our brains.

So, how many stories are you going to have in your repertoire?