Scribblinks

Online mass marketing will fail you. Its too indirect and regardless of how much whuffie you think you have your message will blend in with the spam. Tara Hunt has posted her real life example about this. On her blog she states follower count doesn’t matter and that it is quality over quantity.

I agree with half of that. Follower count doesn’t matter but its not even the quality of your followers that matters. Its how direct and how much work you put into your message.

This feels kind of backwards saying this about someone I adore and has inspired much my community work but if Tara thinks that with whatever whuffie she has built up that she can just make a withdrawal she is dead wrong.

Social media has never been about give and take. Its about engaging and being personal. So no matter how much whuffie you have, no matter how many followers you have if you are only promoting for the masses your message is going to get lost.

The best messages, marketing or not, are direct and relatable to the audience. If you are promoting your event, product or whatever take the time to write a personalized email to the top 10 influencers who you think would benefit most from what you are doing. Explain why they should click your link and what supporting it means to them and the things they value. And then, and this is key, ask them that if they think this is valuable and want to support it, share this information to their network.

The goal is not to build up on whuffie to cash in on it later. The goal is to identify the people who would get the most value from what you have to offer and engage them and empower them to become champions for you. When you do that you have something stronger than marketing, you have something you stronger than a follower, you have someone who really cares and finds value from what you do.