Social Media Makes Marketing More Personal

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Judith & Jim are the authors of The Heart of Marketing – Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back. Visit their website here.

As two former psychotherapists, our path to becoming online marketing teachers for service providers has been a little less than traditional. Maybe that’s why we see sites like Facebook and LinkedIn a bit differently than everyone else.

A quick search on Google will net you hundreds of articles filled with advice on the right way to use social media “professionally.” They’ll give you dozens of tips – from the right way to update your status to what sorts of photos and profiles to display in the first place – all geared to maximize your sales income.

That might work really well for some people, but if it strikes you as being a bit cold, you’re not alone. Genuine, caring sales and marketing is about people, after all — not just about making the big dollars.

Love Your Customers

That’s why when we first started creating and selling our teleseminars and products online, we realized we had to throw a lot of the old rules out the window. We just weren’t comfortable “hard selling” to the people who were interested in what we do. It

didn’t take long before we found out that there were thousands of others around the world who felt the same way.

From the feedback we received during our teleseminars, and the success of our first Soft Sell Internet marketing conference “Bridging Heart and Marketing”, we discovered one of our first Soft Sell Marketing guidelines: love your customers and they will love you back. Instead of working everything by the numbers, we decided to allow some of our passionate care and concern to come through… and it worked. And it keeps on working.

Social Media Makes Marketing Easily Personal

Why mention this now? Because Facebook and other social media sites have made it easier than ever to connect with your readers and buyers in a personal way. Rather than having to fill your customer’s inbox with a newsletter every week, or change the configuration of your website, all you have to do to stay in touch is login and let the world know what’s happening in your life and business.

And that’s great. But we urge you to embrace the “social” side of social media. It breaks down the barriers and opens new channels of connection. And that’s what potential buyers are looking for — the connection they can trust and believe in.