It’s a simple idea, really: get peoples’ attention with a free offer, make yourself indispensable, add scarcity if you can, and they’re hooked. Social Media is just like dealing drugs.
Of course on the Internet creating scarcity is incredibly difficult, but hey: that’s why some drug dealers are more successful than others.
Public relations guru Peter Shankman has compared doing social media to selling drugs on the street. And once you get past the silly opening line—and judging by the comments on Shankman’s article it looks like people are having a hard time doing that—his words are pure genius.
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Marketing, social media, social networking, or if you insist public relations are ALL about these points. People have to listen to you and want more. You need to convince your targets that you have something they can’t get elsewhere. You have to be easy and accessible, and you need—at least occasionally—to distract your targets from the fact that you’re trying to sell them something.
What are you doing to make the products or services you sell special enough that the folks you sell them to can’t live without them? Or at the very least, what are you doing to make sure that your targets are at thinking of you when they go out consuming?
I like my opening line. 🙂
Peter, I like it too, actually. But as my family has taken to using the phrase “that’s SO Jeff” when I say things like that it struck a chord. And you, my friend, got dragged down into the mud with me!