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Social Media for Introverts

Marketing

I’d put money on the idea that many serious introverts, including a number of authors as well as artisans and artists, are the majority of the no-social-media accounts population. Problem is that social media has become a go-to space to be visible to an audience for your books or jewelry or paintings. Years ago, we were often restricted to a local network centered in a shop or had to get a literary agent or traditional publisher to pay attention to our great story. But no more!

The Social Media Exposure Myth

Well, maybe. Social media was originally touted as an easy way to promote your wares worldwide. But the ad-based social media model has built-in incentives to only give access to the largest audience if you are willing to pay for ads. Even then, you might only reach a small percentage of your followers on FB or wherever unless you are willing to pay big bucks. So, we are in some respects back to the TV commercial model. Yuck! Yeah, I don’t want to do a bunch of commercials/ads, nor do I think I’ll get enough of a return on investment to make it worth my effort.

It’s the Engagement That Counts

For small-scale entrepreneurs, mass exposure is likely to be overwhelming. Like the painter from the Renaissance, what you need is at least one patron, and in today’s world perhaps a tribe of fans to follow your work and buy your stuff. And for that, you need to build real relationships and reputation rather than blanketing the social media world with ads. Also, introverts tend to value in-depth one-on-one relationships anyway, so social media may seem rather alien with its focus on numbers of followers and broadcasting of personal information to what amounts to strangers. So, let’s scale this down to a level that introverts might find more comfortable.

Get Organically Social

I was the social media maven for my introverted husband’s coin ring business a few years ago. I noticed that artisans on Etsy.com, where hubby had his shop, tended to feel overwhelmed with what they perceived as social media obligations. All the stuff of marketing and relating to customers is something many makers would rather avoid.

The good news for anyone who wants to avoid social media overwhelm and still be visible:

  • It’s about engagement, not advertisement.
  • You don’t have to be everywhere or compromise your personality or ethics.

Each social media outlet has a slightly different demographic and “culture” for sharing and connecting. Very few engage using posts that are just product promotion. If they put out lots and lots of those in repetition, people will ignore them. Just begging for customers all the time is definitely a turnoff.

Instead, use social media to let us get to know you, the maker or writer. It’s more about you as a person than the product itself (surprised?). Remember that you are the real product; your talent is what sets you apart. We’d like to know about your process. No, dear artist, you don’t have to give away all your “secrets.” We just want to know what it’s like for you to make cool stuff with your own tools and talents.

If you are a strong introvert and just want to make stuff, it’s likely best to work with a partner on the social media stuff. You can also do some of the marketing stuff that does feel comfortable to you. My hubby always wrote a personal note to each customer on parchment paper (his idea) and included a history of the coin that he’d turned into a ring. This was his way of connecting and adding story to his product.

Social Media Outlets

So, read up on some of the blogs about how the different social media outlets work and see what seems to fit your style best. Following are some brief impressions of mine on the major players:

Patreon

Patreon might not be strictly thought of as social media, but it is. It gathers people with a common interest (your work). Most social media is about collecting people around common interests. With Patreon, though, patrons consciously support you with regular funding to create more work. Unlike crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Patreon is designed for a deep, long-term relationship with your fans. Just keep in mind that you will commit to creating work for them and the general public on a regular basis. It’s a major commitment, and it can take time to build a patron audience.

Twitter

Twitter kind of expects people to be engaged several times a day (but not necessarily hundreds of times, thank you!). To me, Twitter is definitely designed for extroverts to take advantage of. It requires too much activity even for me. 😉

Facebook

Facebook is not a fav of mine for biz, but it can work for others. It is a good way to keep a small audience of regular fans apprised of your work. Keep in mind that a Facebook Page by itself will not just bring hordes of people to you. Facebook sets it up so most people won’t see your posts or even paid ads unless you already have a large following (I know, Catch 22). That’s because they, like all public corporations, are primarily interested in making money for their shareholders.

MeWe

As a quieter and much more privacy-focused alternative to the old FB, you can build a tribe over at MeWe. I like that I can separate personal friends from fans by starting over, basically. MeWe doesn’t work on the ad model (they have basic stuff for free and then charge small amounts for extra things, like having a business page or fancier emojis). I like the vibe and the greater impact of my presence because it’s got users in the low millions so far instead of billions.

Pinterest

Pinterest can be good for artists and artisans because it focuses on visuals and doesn’t require a big story behind everything that’s posted. Especially if you are creating for collectors (of genre fiction or jewelry or seashells or paintings or photos, the list goes on), Pinterest can be a good place to get extra visibility.

Instagram

Instagram (owned by Facebook) is also visually oriented and expects very brief posts. I find it a timesaver just because I can post to both it and FB at the same time.

A Simple Social Media Strategy

Pick two or maybe three outlets (two’s enough) that seem to match your personal style. Share yourself and your making process (video, for example, can be a great way to share what you do if you make stuff) regularly. Pick a frequency of posting that works for you (weekly or monthly are best options), and then be very regular with it.

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind that sales are not necessarily highly correlated to social media directly. So don’t despair if you don’t see direct connections, especially at first. Most folks still buy because they search for something they want, or because an offline friend recommended something. Social media is just a way to increase general visibility over time and reach some people you might not have otherwise.

Always remember that your own marketing territory, whether it’s a brick-and-mortar shop on a street in your town or a website of your own (or ideally, both) are your most powerful tools for being visible. Social media will always be extra, mainly because you don’t own the territory.

Go forth and create in peace and joy! And if you want to create or enhance your very own web presence, I’ll be right here. 🙂

Marketing: A Return to Reputation

Marketing

Been busy in my head trying to make the idea of marketing feel authentic to me. This internal debate has been going on since I started my book indexing and editing business many years ago (more on what I’m still doing with that here).

I’ve been listening to Mitch Joel’s marketing podcast, Six Pixels of Separation, off and on for several years now. He’s out in the digital marketing world with some traditional agency experience trying to figure out how best to provide for his clients’ marketing needs in our brave new digital world. Some time has passed since he talked to Brian Clark, the founder of Copyblogger, about Clark’s basic marketing principles, but I think they are perennial.

Here’s an overview of what I took away from that conversation about reputation, visibility, and tribe.

My Consumer Perspective

Although these two guys talked a little about advertising and how social media platforms seem to be relying, as Google has done, on advertising for revenue, I got the distinct impression that they struggled to find value in advertising as a marketing investment. To me, ads feel like an anonymous blast of mostly nonsense (but some of it is amusing). I see how knowing an online user’s interests can focus the types of ads I see, but what if my most important need is one that isn’t related to the catalogue of ads available to the website I’m looking at? I don’t know how many times Google’s YouTube has asked me to pick a product out of three, and none of them are things I’d ever buy.

Mitch and Brian said that search itself is where one can find out what a potential customer is actually looking for and provide them with visibility about yourself at that point. Putting ads on social media outlets doesn’t really make sense because people are not necessarily in consumption mode there. I agree. I don’t want to see ads in my face unless I’m actually looking for something. We Baby Boomers have had enough of mass-market advertising. If you want to sell me something, you’ll have to respond as an option when I’m looking for something, or you’ll have to have an ongoing relationship with me as a customer.

My Provider Perspective

Advertising, cold calling, “closing the sale” mentality; all these things have always felt disrespectful to me. I know my reluctance comes from my early socialization of “don’t bother others” with your stuff or your needs. And yet, there are many good matches out there; folks who do need and are looking for just what I can do or be for them. But advertising feels like bragging and begging, and cold calling feels like just begging. So, how to be visible to those who would really be great to work with?

Visible Reputation

I have reputation settled in my oldest business (publishing services like editing), but not as much in this newer business of website design. I am building a portfolio, though, and my customer service reputation, regardless of the type of business, has always been one of my great talents. The question for me is how best to make that reputation visible.

Looking at it from the potential client’s perspective, I want to be searchable when someone is looking for publishing or site design services. This means being visible on the Web in a regular way that catches the search engine’s attention. That’s what SEO (search engine optimization) strategy is for. By organizing posts like this one and other content in a way that makes the search engine happy, I will be more visible. I can also pay to be more visible in search, but I haven’t seen much return from the couple of times I tried that (Google ads).

Relating to Your Tribe

And being visible to the machine is not enough. There’s the tribe. I also want to be visible to real humans who are interested in what I provide, even if right this minute they are not looking to consume my services. That way I’m in the back of their minds as a quality provider when it comes time to fill a need. But I don’t want to do this part with advertising. There’s no real relationship there. This is where social media activity and what is called “content marketing” come in. By maintaining conversations with customers through posts, newsletters, interactive groups, and video (not just ad postings over and over) I can stay connected in a positive way with folks who generally share my interests, with folks who do what I do and can create referrals, and with customers who can spread the word about my reputation.

Organic growing my customer base then occurs over time. This is authentic marketing for me.

How about you? What’s your approach if you own your own biz, and what do you look for from a potential service or product provider as a potential customer? And lastly, do you see a future for traditional advertising, and if so, what would that look like?

My Social Media Strategy for 2019

Marketing

Big shifts are happening in people’s use of social media for both personal and business purposes, thanks to the downsides of the advertising revenue and data mining models used by the big social networks. I see those ads, and I avoid clicking on them simply because I know I’m being manipulated. On the other hand, I understand the usefulness of the model; broadcast television and radio have been using it in the United States since both technologies began; it does cost money to produce the infrastructure and the content that we all partake of. Same with social media networks. Try setting up your own social network linked to your website and you will see how complex it is to run one of these things. “Free” is never really free; it can’t be and still operate.

Alternatives to the Ad Model

But there are other ways to structure broadcast and online content that don’t manipulate the user with ads and data mining and still generate income (although maybe not at the billion-dollar level). I am a fan of the freemium model used for a lot of software tools these days, at least as long as the free level has some real features to it. I think subscriptions are fine, too. Adobe’s don’t provide the best value for small operators like me, but other providers, like Netflix, provide great content (for a much larger audience) at a reasonable price.

I am both a user of social media as an individual and the owner of businesses that could benefit from the visibility provided by advertising on social media. I choose not to use paid advertising, but that doesn’t mean I choose to be invisible on social media. I prefer to develop connections over time in a number of different outlets and to develop quality relationships with customers and potential customers by being a helpful expert at the free level (blog posting, video), and then inviting folks to connect with me through my website for services that require payment. Slower customer development process, but still effective. The ripples of referral then create growth for my business.

Here are my social networks for 2019 and how I propose to use them, in case you find some value in my experience. 🙂

Facebook

I do find FB useful for its groups in particular, and for staying in genuine connection with family in ways I never did without the ease of posting pics instantaneously. I’ve been amazed at how FB groups have grown from a confusing non-useful thing to the most interactive part of the network. The biggest problem with FB now is their corporate irresponsibility and greed that often comes with being too big. A number of my friends (and my children) have minimized their FB presence or left altogether, and I have great respect for this move. I choose to minimize for the moment, and see where my personal friends and family choose to migrate in the future.

I also have FB pages for my business facets. Without ads, the growth is slow, of course. I will be shutting down my pages and focusing on other networks for my business in the first quarter of 2019.

Instagram

I ignored this one at first, but I currently find it useful for posting photos to both it and Facebook at the same time. Also, my children and neighbors connect with me on this network. Unfortunately, it is also owned by Facebook and works on the advertising model. I am still ruminating over how and whether to be on Instagram in future.

Twitter

Although I have developed some real friendships, deep ones, with a handful of folks on Twitter, I have been appalled by their handling of fake news, etc., and their hypocrisy in deleting some badly behaving accounts and not others, so I have left Twitter for good.

LinkedIn

This job-and-employee-candidate search network hasn’t ever served me well as a sole proprietor, at least so far. It does run at least partially on the advertising model, but the ads are not as intrusive as on other networks. I plan to maintain a presence, but a minimal one for now.

Pinterest

I have renewed my use of Pinterest (check out my boards here) to highlight a number of interests, including tips on website design. Pinterest isn’t really a social network now, if it ever really was one. But it’s a great place to collect information on topics of interest that you can share with others. It makes a nice visual browser search vehicle.

MeWe

This is where I’m going in 2019 (you can find my MeWe profile here), both for business visibility and personal interaction. I’ve been testing out this new social network over the last several months, and I like their freemium model (no ads), their commitment to privacy (no data mining, etc.) and lack of censorship (although that means you have to be a little more discerning about what groups you join and who you allow to be a contact).

Being a lot smaller than some of the other networks, they don’t have all the same features set up, but I like the intimacy of one’s timeline only being posted to contacts and not the public (so far—they plan to add public posting shortly), and the focus on groups as a place to find folks with common interests. This way I can maintain a small group of actual contacts (“friends”) that I know personally, and use the groups function to share in a larger way or make my business blog posts visible. MeWe also has pages for businesses now that make posts visible to the public.

All that said, the owner’s commitment to privacy, no ads, etc. is just his commitment. Like all social networks, none of us users have ownership or ultimate control here, so it pays to stay aware and discerning with all of these networks. And if you do own a business that is visible online, it’s important that you have website territory of your own as a home base.

Regardless of the shifts in social networks in the future, I will always start with my own site first. That’s where I and my products and services will be, and where I can help you build your own website home, of course. 🙂

Speaking Before Thousands, or Just Before Ten

Marketing

Being a Natural

OK, so I’m a natural, I’ll give you that. First memory of being in front of an audience was when I was about four. Some kind of dance recital for nursery school. I distinctly remember admiring my shiny new dancing shoes backstage. Also my red and white net . . . hat, I think it was. I stepped out onto the stage, which had lights, I think. I was stoked, jazzed, definitely not terrified. Not at all. Really no idea why, since I have been nervous in performance since, but only in karate tests and playing the piano. You put me in front of an audience and tell me to open my mouth to speak, and I’m fine.

I may talk too much if I don’t have a prepared speech, mind you, and I will get a little nervous if someone asks me a question that’s way off topic. I learned as an intelligence briefer in the Air Force that it’s OK not to know everything, though; just know where to find the info and get back to the questioner later. I also ended up with a lot of experience as an instructor in the Air Force as well, which definitely helped me maintain my public speaking confidence even after I returned to civilian life in the mid-1980s.

I know most folks are totally terrified when asked to speak before a group (of ten or a thousand, and sometimes a thousand is easier, especially with bright lights so you can’t see them), and most of it seems to be about confidence in their own knowledge and ability to express that smoothly, and deal with questions without stumbling.

You all are really much too hard on yourselves, you know. 🙂 Look how far Teddy Kennedy got with all those “ums.” Although he did do his homework on the content bit. And that’s likely what gave him the confidence to speak with authority, even if he didn’t have a totally polished delivery.

Let’s go through my big factors in public performance success, with an emphasis on speaking and see if there’s anything in them to calm your jitters.

Knowing

Knowing your stuff, whether it’s a song on the piano, a move in a dance, or a topic for a speech. The more “expert” you can get prior to the event, the more confident you’ll feel. But there’s no way you can be the Horowitz of pianists during the first recital, or the Pavlova of dancers at the first student performance. So, it’s important to get real about your expectations and not be too perfectionist about the content part. Your audience will likely be much easier on you than you will be on yourself. You’ll be fine. And you won’t be out there naked, like in your public speaking nightmares. Promise. Unless you live and work in a nudist community, and then I assume that this part will be OK. 😉

Practice

Now the cringing comes in. And I am totally with you on this one. Video or audio (depending on the sort of performance you’ll be doing). Yep. Gotta do it. Yep, my voice sounds weird to me played back, too. Yep, I look stupid to me in video (well, maybe not so much lately after a little course in doing videos). But it’s really the only way to get feedback from yourself to tweak your delivery.

I still remember giving a talk at a little home-based church in my neighborhood. They videotaped all the talks, and the minister gave me the tape afterwards so I could review it. Took me forever, or damn near, to get around to it. Minister asked for the tape (it was real video tape!) back to re-use, so I had to look at it. Cringe. But I learned so much! I definitely needed to tune-up my delivery because I hadn’t spoken in a long time, and my body movements in particular were distracting. So, there you go. Comfortable I was, but my delivery still needed work. So, video and/or audio rehearsal = Do It!

I also participated in a great free video course from Niamh Arthur, an expert on video marketing and just a really nice person. She uses her intro video challenge in a Facebook group to funnel folks into her premium stuff, which is also excellent, but you can get tons of great advice and practice doing her free 30-day video challenge. She splits up the participants into manageable small groups to provide supportive feedback on practice videos, and also provides lots of great tips during the process.

Passion

If you aren’t excited or inspired or just plain curious about what you are communicating to your audience, you will have trouble getting the information to stick, and you will likely put your audience to doodling or nodding off.

The most important lesson I learned in a college class on public speaking years ago was about passion. I gave a number of speeches in the class, and although they were well-organized and smoothly presented, they didn’t fire up my audience—I didn’t really connect emotionally (and you need to do this for intellectual as well as traditionally inspirational speaking). No, I didn’t need to get all 6-foot-9 Tony Robbins energy up there (although he does that genuinely from within, so it works for him). That’s the thing, it has to come from inside using whatever style is yours. It’s not about consciously manipulating the audience to connect with them; you gotta be jazzed about what you’re saying. And I wasn’t passionate about any of my speech content until I talked about linguistics, which was my college major. I really love language in its almost-infinite variety, and when I talked about that, I really made an impact, not just on the minds of my audience by on their “hearts.”

Let Us Benefit from Your Message

I received some excellent advice I from a minister when I was learning to give lay talks for a Unitarian Universalist church in the late 1990s: Touch their minds, touch their hearts, and give them something to take away, something that changes them inside in some way. You will need the knowing, the practice, and most importantly, the passion in order to give this gift to your audience. That’s what gave me so much satisfaction, even when I was four: giving the audience some part of me to take home with them. It was a gift for them, and a gift for me.

So, knowing, practice, passion. That should calm most of the nerves, I think, although many of you may still not actively seek out public speaking. But if you’re an author who needs to promote your book, or a scientist who needs to convince your peers, or a business consultant who needs to change a corporate culture, public speaking is still an important skill set for your visibility, and one that need not terrify, especially if you take care of the discomforts ahead of time. The impact of your personality is so magnified and so much more effective in face-to-face or video-and-audio visibility that it really makes dollars and sense to create this type of access to you on your website and elsewhere online and in the physical world.

I would really, really love to hear your stories of learning to perform in public, especially how it felt, and how it feels, what your big factors are, and if you found anything in my little missive here helpful. Comments, please!

To Know, Like, and Trust

Marketing

Several years ago I went on a rare for me trip to that endangered species, “the mall,” to buy new clothes for another rarity, a business trip (ah, the joys of the freelance life working from home!). I dreaded the great search for something that would work and not break the bank. I did find a little dress and some shoes eventually, but the very best part about the whole experience was—the human connection. No, not just people watching in the mall, but the helpfulness of the sales staff in the stores. I don’t know if the Apple Store’s aura has spread, or if retail corporations have rediscovered their ethic of customer service (and maybe commission-based sales), but I really noticed an uptick in the quality of sales service in both large department stores  and smaller boutique outlets. I felt connected and taken care of in both types of places. Makes me want to do more of my shopping in the real world rather than online, actually. Which brings me to the title of this post.

I’ve been reading marketing philosophy material for some time now, and although I’m getting tired of the “3 things/5 things/10 things” bit with some of the posts I’ve read, one theme seems to come through as most common-sensical to me: People do business with other people they know, like, and trust (which is what the folks in the mall stores were fostering so well).

Also, folks tend to be looking not so much for “stuff” but for experiences that they think they need that “stuff” in order to have. Steve Jobs of Apple Computer understood the human desire for a certain kind of experience, usually involving the excitement of the new, the potential for making processes faster and easier, the aesthetics of visual experience, and the nice feeling of making connections. I got all of these needs fulfilled by the sales folks at the mall. The quality and fit of the clothes counted also, but the shopping experience turned out to be more important to me.

Stay curious about your customers and prospects (without being nosy), and the liking and trusting bit will follow pretty easily. That’s been my experience with my own businesses. Most of my best reviews (like on the footer of my editorial biz site here) are about the relationship with the client. I’d say customer service makes up at least forty percent of what gives satisfaction and creates referrals.

So, do your customers know, like, and trust you? And how do you go about getting to know them, please them, and build trust? Take a look at your website this coming week, and ask yourself those questions in terms of how you present yourself and your products and/or services. I’d love to know what you find!

© 2015 – 2020 Joanne Sprott