Hackmeister Marketing

I learned an important lesson about social media recently. Anyone who follows a “social media expert” in the social graph has come across blog posts and news articles proclaiming the arrival of Pinterest as the next big thing in social media and how brands and businesses can jump on the bandwagon to increase awareness and sales. After reading dozens of these (some of which were very good, like these from 8pm Warrior and Kevin Spidel) I somewhat sarcastically posted on Facebook and Twitter that I would be adding my two cents to the topic soon. I am a big fan of Pinterest, and do believe it can be a great tool for connecting businesses with their customers, but I realy didn’t think the world needed yet another article on the subject.

I didn’t really expect much of a response to my posts, maybe a few groans and jeers but not much. Too my surprise, the first reaction I got was from a small business owner friend of mine. He had only recently heard about Pinterest and was genuinely interested in learning about how he could use it to grow his photography business (huge potential there!) and he was looking forward to my blog.

This really got me thinking about the nature of the business of social media. Those of us who are in the trenches each day are bombarded by information coming at us from all angles all the time. We follow hundreds of other social media people who are taking in and sharing these huge amounts of information, so it doesn’t take long before it seems like everyone is talking about a few topics, and we (sometimes) cynically see it as jumping on the bandwagon. Personally, I have often stopped myself from sharing a story or writing about a particular topic because I have felt like everyone else had already beaten me to it. I now realize what a huge mistake this is.

My audience is not other social media people. Don’t get me wrong, I love meeting and interacting with other people in my field. I have learned, and will continue to learn, so much from the amazing group of professionals in my online circles and I know those connections are essential to my future success. But my true audience is people that are not intimately connected to the social graph. My job is to help connect those people to social media and help them use the medium to increase their own connections and business.

I got myself trapped in a very small, but very well connected world, and lost track of the bigger picture. I have failed my audience and done my business a disservice. It is not a mistake I plan on continuing.

This is not to say that I will be banging out repeat blogs of every Mashable story, but I will make a concentrated effort to use my voice in social media to make sure my core audience stays up to date on the latest trends and goings on in a constantly shifting and changing environment. For those of you who don’t spend most waking moments plugged into social media, I hope you can use me as a resource and advisor in this space. For my colleagues in social media, I hope you find some value and enjoyment in my particular take on issues that affect our industry.