Last week I made a commitment to restart this Tuesday 2¢ series of bog posts and today although it’s Christmas Day, I am publishing.
Why? Because developing relationships on social media is all about being present. Plus, of course, if you celebrate the holidays like my family does who would ignore the opportunity to make a pun about presents/presence?
Ted Rubin, who I have had the good fortune to work with (and been inspired by) this year says:
“Relationships are like muscle tissue… the more they are engaged, the stronger and more valuable they become.”
And, of course he’s right, a neglected relationship, like a muscle just wastes away, whether its family, a tight personal relationship, a professional contact, a customer, a visitor to your website or the most delicate of social media connections.
The activities that we do to exercise the relationship muscle make us present. I have spent almost the last two years building a presence for a software company, I put all my energy into a professionally very successful 2018, growing their presence, but it mean’t have not really been present on here or on Twitter, as me.
I restart this blog series, a bunch of lovely people showed up, I engage with Twitter again, conversations start happening, people engage in LinkedIn. I am exercising this relationship muscle again. Unless you do stuff like this, it doesn’t happen by itself.
There is also no shortcut, yes tools can help a bit, I’ve been researching a bunch of them for a project – but none of them can do the work.
Yes, they can schedule stuff to be posted at a convenient time for my audience in far away parts of the world, they can recommend stuff, maybe use big data and “AI” to tell me what’s wrong with the title of my posts, that I really ought to create listicles and the best time for me to tweet.
But… they can’t do the work.
Automation just augments the work, you could setup the most complex ”If This Then That Rules” (IFTTT) in the world, beautifully orchestrate your social media self, but if you are not present, if you don’t show up, if it’s clear you are not really there, people notice that it’s not authentic, that you have not done the work. The “This” in IFTTT still has to be the work.
It’s exactly the same for marketing automation, the thing people hate about the obviously automated re-marketing, it’s lack of presence and authenticity.
The dreadful goals of “better than the industry average of 1.5%” click rate, is just another way of not doing the work, of not understanding the audience and choosing to carpet bomb 98.5% of the world with spam, for a few cents each. Relationships work better when you authentically show up, when you as a marketer give the present of presence.
This was intended as just a note to myself, I still have to show up. It’s a quick mile on the relationship exercise bike to ease the stiffness in this particular personal blogging muscle.
And, if you are reading this happy holidays and thank you for being here, with your present of presence. I hope you like mine.
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I’m a 3xCMO, now a marketing strategy advisor and podcast host at Rockstar CMO. Although, I’m not a rock star, but a marketing leader, strategist, content marketer, columnist, speaker, industry watcher, and creator of ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust) for the companies I work with. But most of all, I am an enthusiastic tea drinker.
You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or now Threads! – or listen to my weekly podcast at Rockstarcmo.com
The half-baked thoughts shared on this blog may not reflect those of my employer or clients, and if the topic of this article is interesting or you just want to say hello please get in touch.