Please read this.

As the economy tumbles, organizations dependent on convincing individuals to part with hard earned cash or time are doing some navel gazing in an effort to find new ways to inspire customers, clients, donors, and activists. A popular topic of navel gazing is “indirect marketing” via social networks: does energy put into being fascinating on twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc. generate anything more than sometimes fascinating, sometimes inane, often entertaining conversations with friends, family, and people you only kind of know?

To add my own bit of navel gazing to the topic:

I agree with those who’ve argued that being scintillating online only drives business, donations, and thought leadership if you’re already a go-to source for information and services in whatever niche you operate.  I subscribe to two dozen political twitter feeds, a few dozen more marketing feeds, and a few dozen more friends and family feeds.  I found the political and marketing feeds because I came across something interesting and/or authoritative written by those twitterers in some other venue, or they were recommended by someone I know and trust.  I’m sure there are thousands of smart, riveting, insightful commentators that I’m missing – I just don’t know how to find them in order to be bowled over and convinced to hire them, give their organization money, or pass along their great ideas.

Even amongst the rarefied world of social networkers with the gravitas to turn being interesting into a profitable endeavor, the most successful will keep in mind that the medium is social. The risks of having potential clients or donors see pictures of you in that inaugural ball gown you maybe wish you hadn’t worn are outweighed by the imperative to be an actual person that said clients and donors might want to get to know.  Similarly, over-editing of “tweets” and other social networking content, even if it’s still pithy and brilliant, removes the personality and makes the content just taglines, rather than the musings of an intersting person.  The corrolary of this notion is that organizations can’t blog, twitter, facebook, etc. and expect it to yield anything more than service requests – a real live person, with personality and perspective that is worth connecting to has to do it.

Finally, I’m a firm believer that the best way to ask for something is to ask for it, directly and without apology.  Obviously only a small proportion of your tweets, facebook posts, and Plaxo status updates should be asks, but if the purpose is to drive someone to do something – consider hiring you, make a donation, call a legislator, whatever – then you have to be confident enough in your purpose and the value you offer to go ahead and ask them.  Indirect marketing via social networks isn’t marketing at all if it’s always indirect.

So: Thanks for reading this, please hire us. We’re good at what we do, and we can help you do what you do.

-Shayna