Social Media and the attempt to be genuine

I’m tired.  I am tired of good people doing well with social media and then turning around and sharing their “secrets” with everyone.  Do you know what that has done?  It has created a world where business executives, salespeople and marketers all try to mimic each other’s moves in the hopes of being the next big thing online.  ”Be genuine!”, “Don’t sell – create and participate in a community!”, “Comment on every blog so people will know you!”, “Do link exchanges with other bloggers!”, etc.  It’s all so formulaic now.  Seth Godin is the new God and everyone thinks they can be the next Gary Vee.

Gawd dammit.  Once upon a time, I wasn’t that skeptical when I dealt with people online.  People were just genuine because… they were genuine.  And I simply didn’t do business with people who gave me the impression that they just weren’t nice or if it was evident that they didn’t care about technology.  But now, everyone’s trying to be nice.  Everyone’s trying to pretend like they care about YOU.  They don’t.  They can’t even be bothered to write you a personalized letter.

In politics, the Internet has turned democracy into a game of “click this button to sign and send the petition” with a scripted note, only to receive a scripted note in return from the political parties you contacted.  All aboard the merry-go-round!  On social networks, your wall or timeline or profile is hijacked by friends that think it’s ok to use your personal profile to market their shit.  And they expect you to share their stuff because, you know, you’re “friends”!  That’s not how it works.  Oh, and if you do really well, all of a sudden, your “friends” resent you.  And bloggers know that if they are able to write enough guest entries or get enough links exchanged with others, they can quit their miserable day jobs and just live off the income coming from the advertising on their blogs.  It’s why they send you generic letters that make it look like they love your blog… but little do you know, they don’t give a damn – it’s all an attempt to get THEM more readers.  Case in point, I just received this letter (I’ll just share the first paragraph):

“I am contacting you today after coming across and reading the great content on your blog— to log and catalog desires, wishes, and things you plan to accomplish is by far the most important aspect to actually undertaking goals! Most people do not put their thoughts on paper—consequently leaving them without tangible reminders and constant ambition. I’m sure you can imagine how important this idea could be for those going through health struggles regardless of what they may be. An individual going through treatment, in remission, and even the family members of those with chronic or terminal illnesses face everyday challenges of maintaining a quality of life—self-motivation and inspiration is the key!”

Sounds genuine, eh?  Since I’m a skeptical little bugger now, I decided to google her name and in a separate search, I also looked up the first sentence of that paragraph.  Turns out, it’s a script.  Same exact letter was sent to other bloggers… except they were stupid enough to let her write a guest post or do a link exchange.  Her blog is about cancer survival or something.  Regardless of the cause, it’s a formula I don’t like.  It turns us all into spammers instead of people who could take a few minutes out of their time to write something more personalized.

The thing I hate about this is that it works.  It works so incredibly well.  Cookie cutter script, send it off to a shit load of bloggers, watch your traffic go up..and potentially, your advertising revenue goes up too.  I just refuse to take part in it.  It takes more time but whenever I decide to drive traffic to a site, I write something very personal to each blogger.  Yeah, maybe I went looking for traffic but at least I won’t tell you generically that ‘your content is great!’.  Instead, I’ll tell you exactly why I love your blog.  And if I don’t love your blog, I won’t write.  Period.

I don’t like bullshit.  Sadly, there’s a lot of it online.  And there’s a lot of people profiting from it.

But there are also a lot of people profiting from using social media by just being themselves.  Don’t beg.  Don’t pretend.  Step outside of your circle of friends and let others get to know you.  It’s not comfortable but if you open yourself up to the world online, there’s a good chance that people will gravitate towards that instead of the plastic ‘pretends’ all around them.