Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

This series begins here.

I really love my Illy Cof­fee. Really,  I do. But I’m not a fan of it on Face­book and I don’t even know if I could fol­low it on Twit­ter – and I fol­low a lot of peo­ple. Heck, if I could get a coupon or some­thing for the sim­ple act of fol­low­ing Illy maybe I would.

Am I really say­ing this, a guy who’s job it is to advise brands on how to use social media?

Yeah, I am say­ing it and it’s some­thing that needs to be said with all the Koolaide sip­ping going on.  Just because some­one has an affin­ity for your brand it doesn’t mean they want to engage it dur­ing their spare time – if they actu­ally have spare time. I haven’t had any of that since my first daugh­ter was born.

Peo­ple have pri­or­i­ties and it’s a good idea to think about where your brand fits into that list of pri­or­i­ties before expect­ing an entire demo­graphic to be it’s friend. And then share this rela­tion­ship with their friends and also gen­er­ate con­tent for you for free.

Sure, brands that illicit pas­sion can have often have a core ener­gized base of believ­ers who want to inter­act and dis­cuss the brand – like Harley own­ers or Mac users. And tech­ni­cal prod­ucts often have user groups. But if you mar­ket a pack­aged good or a ser­vice, you prob­a­bly shouldn’t expect social media to do the same job your push mar­ket­ing has been doing. And maybe “friend” isn’t what you want your cus­tomers to be in the first place. (Think critic, mem­ber, or advocate.)

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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This entry was posted Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 12:07 pm and is filed under social media. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.