Non-Marketing Uses of Social Media

Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell have an excellent piece in Law Practice Today on 10 non-marketing uses of social media; very basic items such as ‘reconnecting’, or ‘learning a new subject matter’. It’s well worth a look.

One recurring thought that hit me as I read it, though, was that for each and every suggestion (whether intended or not) there was excellent marketing value being delivered. Marketing should never be considered simply running around flogging articles, or speaking like we’re reading from an advertising script. If those are the only activities someone takes part in online, you might even class their efforts as anti-marketing; because they certainly aren’t doing their business development efforts any good!

Those activities and the online text associated might be one small element of our self-promotional efforts, but marketing needs to be so much more.

There’s a big movement these days to have a ‘non-marketing approach’ to marketing. But in reality, I would say it’s ALL marketing; and even more so for someone selling services. Any activity we do that creates a better impression, credibility, or shows our human side of compassion, humour and so forth, should be considered a worthy marketing effort. The trick is to kill the sales-routine, be yourself, and know the etiquette for when to shut it down – a skill lost on more than a few.

And just so we don’t think this problem is new: consider that Rotarians have a rule telling members to keep their business cards in their pocket. The online world doesn’t have these kinds of etiquette rules for ‘real world’ activities, but that doesn’t stop one’s peers from being left with a bad impression. An impression that could be worse online than it is off — partly because we paint this picture of ourselves daily with our words. And partly because those words can haunt for years to come.