Social Media Fly By’s

February 11, 2010  |   Posted in Blog   |   0 Comments   Tags: eCommerce, Facebook, Fly By, followers, self promotion, Social Media, trust, Twitter

Allow me to tax your memory a bit. Tom Cruise in a little movie called Top Gun, remember that? Of course you do.

One of my favorite scenes is when Maverick gets his butt chewed out for his fly by of the tower. They called it “buzzing the tower”. One of the hi ranking officers spilled coffee all over the front of his shirt when Mav buzzed by after telling him “Negative Ghost Rider the pattern is full.” In other words, don’t do it because the airport is too busy.
Historically this maneuver is done as some kind of victory stunt. It’s a military “woot!” or “look at me!” Take a look at the video.

Now a question for you.
Are you a social media Ghost Rider? Do you just buzz the towers of Facebook and Twitter every  now and then just to promote your latest victory or “woot” your latest blog? You see I spend a lot of
time in the social media hive spots…..uhh, probably too much time and from time to time I see the fly by’s. Someone that doesn’t engage in any way other than by just posting his latest achievement or worse, his latest product to sell. I’m so tempted to say “hey Maverick! The pattern is full!”

The question you need to ask yourself is “am I really plugged into social media, really?” In other words, are you really grasping the spirit of what the social media revolution is all about?
What is it all about? Good question.

Relationships, trust and discovery.

Really, at the heart of social media is this issue of relationships. Since beginning my own social media participation I can’t tell you how many people I have started relationships with that I have never even met face to face. People I speak to daily about a
multitude of topics and many of the topics have nothing to do with my industry. I’ve even hired someone for  my company based on what I learned about her from her Facebook presence. The bottom line is, in this new world people want to know who they’re doing business with on a personal level. This is only accomplished by engaging your followers and friends. Flying by just to shout out  your latest cool thing is just social media spam and we all know how we feel about spam.

There is a handy little button on Facebook when you hover over someone’s post that says “Hide” and when you  click on that your posts go away, all of them and you know what else? You’ll never know you’ve been hidden which means that even though you think you have an audience for your self promotion, it’s falling on deaf ears.

Trust is something we all want from our friends. When it comes to eCommerce, trust is paramount and social media provides an avenue for you to build trust with your consumers. How do you accomplish this? It’s simple, be yourself. Talk about the little things in your life that highlights your humanity. In other words, don’t be afraid to talk about your weaknesses, what you’re reading, what weird thing happened to you today etc. Just be you. If you try to be someone you’re not, it will come out eventually.
And that’s not good. Talk about losing followers!

Lastly, discovery. It’s so cool to discover the unique personality behind a brand, behind a cold static online presence. One my all time favorite bands is on Facebook and I connected with them and now we actually chat from time to time. How awesome is that? That same feeling of discovery happens when a consumer connects to your company and discovers the actual living breathing person behind the company entity.
By the time they actually knock on your door to do any business they’ll feel like they already know you. Instant trust. If you can conquer the trust factor, well you can do anything.

Don’t be a social media fly by. Nobody loves a Maverick in the airspace. Stop a while, engage and show the world who you are.