Halloween vs. Social Media Marketing

I don’t dig Halloween.  Not a good season for me.

For starters, I’m not too big into scary stuff; life is plenty frightful for me as it is.  I’ve had nightmares off and on for 30+ years after seeing The Exorcist when I was a kid.  Not too cool about Jason, Michael, or Freddy, and don’t even get me started about Paranormal Activity.  You can have all that stuff.

I know what you’re saying: “But what about trick or treating and the cute costumes and the candy and blah blah blah?”  Well, here’s what I say to you: you never know who’s door you’re knocking on, the costumes are too expensive, the candy rots your teeth, and blah blah blah right back at ya.  A Halloween fan?  Not so much.

I do like jack o’lanterns, though.

Anyway, you’ll come to find, as I have, that you can pull some pretty cool social media marketing out of just about anything, even if it is something as uncomfortably bizarre as Halloween.  For your review, some “good” things about Halloween that aren’t so good for SMM:

1. Halloween is supposed to scare you. Social media marketing should NOT. It’s just about creating relationships, which is something you do (or should do) in your business every day.  Any measure of success you’ve had up to this point can be traced back to the forming and nurturing of relationships.  Social media just represents a different way of doing it.  Kyle Lacy put out a great post about it this week, and included some great stats on how big social media marketing is getting, and how mainstream its becoming.

2. You wear a mask on Halloween.  You NEVER wear one in social media marketing. Part of Halloween’s fun (for those of you weirdos who enjoy it…), is hiding your true identity and acting out in a way you normally wouldn’t.  In social media marketing, your honest, transparent, and genuine online representation of both you and your business are crucial to your success.  And if you’ve got an upset customer, don’t hide; address it head-on, out in the open, and make sure your follow-through with them is visible as well.  This week, eMarketer.com shared a survey taken by Invoke Solutions regarding trust-building.  In that survey, 37% of frequent social media users said it was “extremely important” that dialog is open to both positive and negative comments. Bottom line: being transparent will help your bottom line.  Take off the mask.

3. Halloween is a big day to get lots of sweet stuff. Social media marketing is a great way to GIVE lots of sweet stuff. Yes, give.  Through social media marketing, you build your reputation and trust value by helping others.  Think about it in your own life…if you call a plumber, and he shows you that you don’t need a new toilet, you just need to fix the rubber stopper, and he’s got one in his truck he’ll give you, wouldn’t you call him back when you’ve got water all over the kitchen floor?  Provide value for people, and good things will happen.  As Shane Gibson and Stephen Jagger say in their book Sociable!, “networking online is not about generating referrals so much as it is about becoming referable.”

4. Halloween is on one day a year (thank the good Lord above). Social media marketing should happen DAILY. It shouldn’t take over your life, but you should be willing to commit some of your resources to growing and maximizing your online reputation every day.  In a previous post, Time Budgeting for Social Media, I laid out “The Tithe Rule”:  an easy way to determine, and track, the amount of time you should spend on social media marketing.  Between writing and reading and commenting on blogs, posting on Twitter, answering questions and participating in discussions on LinkedIn, and keeping pace with your Facebook fan page, you’ll have plenty of quality ways to fill up that time, and grow your reputation in the process.

So, this weekend, as you get through the spookiest time of the year, take a look around…and remember what NOT to do in your social media marketing ventures.

Boo!  Whoa…I just scared myself.