As you slave away on your blog, or copy and paste the umpteenth link on twitter, do you ever feel a sense of doubt? You may have gone as far as enlisting a marketing agency to create crisp, clean marketing content for your social networks. But have you ever experienced that niggling feeling that maybe none of this is doing anything?  Countless voices in the blogosphere keep telling you that. yes, something good will come of all this! Human connection! Brand loyalty! And maybe, someday, real, physical, hold-in-your-hand profits! You want to believe it, you really do, but as you sit there, rubbing your bleary eyes, you’re desperate for proof.

Last weekend, I witnessed an astonishing thing. Concrete personal benefit as a direct result of my social networking efforts.  The Creator’s Project, “a new network dedicated to the celebration of creativity and culture across media,” held a competition on its facebook page. Whoever could accrue the most “likes” on a single post would win two tickets to the Creator’s Project official launch in New York, featuring musical performances, films, and art exhibits.  Simple.  A friend of mine dutifully wrote a post, then sent a facebook message to a limited circle of friends with an emotive and humorous back story, a link, and a simple request.

Not a bad start, but not a great one either.  And definitely not enough to secure a win. Your main base of friends/readers/customers/what have you can be your greatest promotional asset. Don’t be afraid to appeal to them, albeit sparingly. Luckily I didn’t need to be asked—the content marketing deviant in me immediately came to life. Surely this was the perfect opportunity to use social networking as a marketing tool? After a solid hour’s effort, I solicited a large fraction of my friends list, with five separate drafts tailored to different audiences within my network.

Making a demand of the network you’ve spent so long cultivating can be a delicate process. Keep these key points in mind when you start drafting:

• Make it personal. No one wants to be bullied by a robot.
• Provide some back story so your readers know what they are supporting. But don’t drag it out.
• Acknowledge that you are asking something of them.
• State your gratitude along with any benefits they could receive.
• Humor helps, but make sure to be sincere.

While my recruitment rate was less than 50%, that in addition to my friend’s previous efforts was enough to secure two tickets to the Creators Project’s New York event.  And there you have it! Concrete results.

In this case I made a request based on my confidence in existing relationships.  And that is why you’ve spent so much time cultivating your company’s online persona. You too are developing relationships that you can one day call upon. Provide support for your target market.  Return their comments. Show that you care about their input. If you have really taken the time to invest in solid content marketing that actually provides a service for your readers, you may find that they’ll be willing to champion your cause when the time comes. Then when you really need them, go ahead and make the ask.

But the real winner in this story, of course, is the Creators’ Project. I can pat myself on the back all I want, but by offering even the mere chance of something truly phenomenal, they got me to do their work for them. The Creator’s Project facebook page is gaining fans daily by transforming existing followers into active recruiters.  Have you offered your readers something spectacular lately?

Nicola Fairhead is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments. WriterAccess is powered by ideaLaunch, a full service content marketing agency serving hundreds of clients and thousands of writers since 2000.

Image courtesy of http://andpluckyourstrings.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/man_loudspeaker.jpg

Tags: content marketing

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 8:48 am and is filed under Content Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.