If you’re clever, virtually anything can become a marketing channel.
Outside of the obvious tactics, you could offer your deals in a Facebook group, promote your eBook in a Google+ community, or join Reddit to post a story about your company’s Social Good initiatives.
But here’s the problem…so can everyone else. And what we end up with is a stream of information that looks like everyone shouting for us to pull out our wallets and BUY.
Think about some of the names of these channels: “forums,” “groups,” “communities”…none of these sound much like the types of venues that people visit to be sold.
I’d like to start seeing some aggressive anti-marketing sentiment taking hold of the moderators of these channels. I’m tired of having every community degrade into a sea of self-promotion.
The worst part, is that the real human beings are lost amidst the noise. And isn’t that why we joined “social” sites in the first place? For the people and conversations?