I had an interesting meeting yesterday with someone who I very much respect: a experienced media executive with a history of success and innovation.
Part of the reason for getting together was to bounce off him a social media initiative that we’re getting ready to roll out in our organization. I wanted to test that our logic was sound and that all of the supporting activity that we’re planning ties in with the overall mission of the initiative.
(I’m excited about what we’re planning and am looking forward to sharing it on the blog.)
A question developed for my friend while we were reviewing the plan: How will you make sure that marketing messages are distributed through the network you develop?
I had one of those moments where you start to explain and realize that your foundation concepts are so different than the traditional framework, that what you are saying sounds weak and flimsy.
We don’t mandate anything when we social media for marketing, I said. We offer up pieces of relevant content and conversation, and we hope that they are useful enough to be included in the authentic dialogues of the people we are connected with.
Sounds kind of soft, doesn’t it?
Today, I come across a succinct blog entry that gets to the heart of the matter more directly:
Social media is not push marketing – use it as such and watch the people run. Social media is rather, permission based marketing and is about conversation and participation. And, that conversation and participation turns out to be the marketing.
The author, Mike Brewer, is thinking specifically to apartment marketing through social media, but gets the key:
The “permission” embedded in social media is being part of another person’s network. You’ve been invited into their personal space. It’s like being a guest at their home. Everything you do, particularly at the outset, needs to be consistent with the permission that’s been granted to you.
You don’t walk into someone’s house for a dinner party and shove the flier from your restaurant in their hands.
If you want to get them to think about going to your restaurant, you get into a conversation with them. You admire their taste in food. You talk about chefs you’ve worked with before. You ask what kind of food experiences they’ve had.
You mention that you have a restaurant.
And then you wait and hope that they ask if they can come by.
That’s the kind of conversation they have implicitly given you permission to have. That’s at the heart of social media.
