Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA

6 years ago · 2 min. reading time · ~10 ·

Blogging
>
Anne 🐝 blog
>
Why the fuss about letting people know about your services....on social media?

Why the fuss about letting people know about your services....on social media?

413925cf.jpgA Tempest in a Teapot....


This post is inspired by Matt Sanders' LinkedIn status update chastising people for contacting him with a sales offer and some of the comments on: 


First, I agree that we are all inundated with unwanted sales pitches. I agree with Matt that it is frustrating when someone you don't know pitches you out of the blue or a brand new contact sends you a sales offer as soon as you have given them permission to join your network. That is definitely spam and an abuse of a connection. 

I have already weighed in on:



The reaction to Jim Murray's post about his new business venture is disturbing on SO many levels. Jim has shared helpful tips and insights in 405 LinkedIn Publisher articles and  well over 100 beBee posts. (I stopped counting because there are so many.) Jim has GIVEN and given generously

I consider myself to be in the same boat. In addition to the blogs that I have written for clients, I have written more posts than I can count in 2 of my own blogs, HuffPost, the now defunct Event Coup, and as a guest blogger for other portals. I also managed a community of 17 LinkedIn Groups plus their 2 leadership groups for over 8  years. 

Jim and I are not alone. Perhaps people are under the mistaken notion that those who share content and manage groups on social media channels are paid for their contributions. In the examples I have provided of my work and Jim's work, many of our contributions are shared without compensation of any kind. Blog posts we write for clients are, of course, a different matter. I know that I  have tended to treat some of that work as a loss leader, hoping that the exposure would lead to business inquiries. It does not.

In an effort to encourage people to consider using the services of other members, during tough economic periods, I have created group discussions where members can share their services or let other members know about the services they require. I also set up 2 specific groups to encourage reciprocity. 


(I can't take credit for those. They were the brainchild of the community owner, Julius Solaris). 


When businesses engage on social media, it is not a hobby or something they do just for fun. The purpose of business social media channels is to build brand awareness, generate leads, and engage with clients. I weighed in on this in a blog post, and a presentation:





When I want to engage just for the sake of engaging or interact with friends and family, I do that off-line or through my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts.
 

So, what would one suggest to business owners The expectation in some corners seems to be that some people should always be giving and others should always be taking.

Newsflash: Businesses that don't generate business eventually go OUT of business.

There is a huge difference between spam and sharing information about one's services. After years of posting tips, advice, and content for free, I think that content producers have earned the right to share information about their services without being chastised.

What do you think?


Anne Thornley-Brown, MBA, is the President of Executive Oasis International, a consulting firm that specializes in the facilitation of executive retreats, meetings, and team building. In addition to her own blogs, Anne has also written for clients including Plan Your Meetings by MPI, EventMobi, Event Manager Blog, Meetings.net, Cvent, and Elite Meetings.

"
Comments
#62
Sorry Clare. Just seeing this now. With all due respects, business R.O.I. is about quantifying and measuring results.
#56
Definitely, getting to know individuals on a personal level can lead to more opportunities. I agree with you Praveen Raj Gullepalli.
Please let's stick to the topic. Thank you.

Milos Djukic

6 years ago #27

OK, I will explain in a few words: 1. I have posted some personal long-form posts on LinkedIn, for no obvious reason. 2. This particular post was not business-oriented, marketing oriented or a self-marketing. 3. The prominent scientist and researcher from the same field of professional interest has seen this post. He has contacted me. 4. We have achieved excellent cooperation which is strictly business-oriented. 5. Much later on, I learned from him that a key component, in addition to professional competencies that were not related to social media, was my long-form post on social media. 6. Why me? I'm far from the best in a particular professional area. Because... One possible conclusion (Occam's razor like): Writing takes place in the subconscious. In addition to the list of references and professional competence there is something more that I respect and appreciate a lot and luckily I am not the only one. I call it "virtual synchronicity" or a "fractal alignment". Business is personal.
#45
Getting people interested in a free monthly subscription was never a concern. The issue is that people did not migrate to other services or make a 1 time contribution that was about the cost of a cup of coffee to keep the ezine free. Since archiving it, people have paid to access the articles. Some have paid for access to the full collection. No one has ever said it is not possible to generate business this way. I have seen consultants and coaches who market their services to individuals and very small businesses succeed with this strategy. It's because they are interacting directly with potential clients and potential clients are reading their content. When it comes to B2B sales, there still aren't enough executives who are actively engaged. This is likely to change with time.
#
#52 it is a simple click on the link available in any email. If you get tired doing a click, just let me know. I can do it for you LOL
#50
Michael O'Neil

Phil Friedman

6 years ago #23

#26
The definition of content marketing (not yours necessarily) that you quote here, Anne, is naively theoretical. For if it were not, we wouldn't see all of the content "curation" (which I see as soft plagiarism most of the time) that goes on, in which people and companies use the content of others for their own marketing purposes. This is how I see it. I provide free original content which I try to make of value to the reader. My objective in doing so is, in part, to engage and build relationships. Readers are free to enjoy my content and do what they want in terms of engaging -- or not. However, just as on TV, the free content is provided in exchange for the opportunity to put a "commercial advert" in front of the audience. As a reader, you can choose to view the advert or not, but it's silly to say that I offend you by putting it in front of you. And if I get annoyingly aggressive with the advertising presented with my content, you are free not to read my posts. After all, I don't force you to read the commercial before looking at the content or make you sign up with your email address before showing you the promised content. Cheers!
I agree Scott.
I agree. Ren\u00e9e \ud83d\udc1d Cormier. Content must still deliver value and it must also have clear calls to action. I also think it is important to initially initiate contacts offline. Then, when you engage online, at least people will know who you are.
#36
On this we can agree.
Blogging has brought me business. A lot of blogging business and it has really added up. I have enjoyed it and I can't complain on that score. However, it has not been successful tool to promote my core services (executive retreats, team building, meeting facilitation) as intended. So I agree with Phil. It's time to embark on a programme of more overt social media marketing. There must still be value and it can't be constant but there is nothing wrong with from time to time reminding people about your services or letting them know about a special offer. After almost 2 decades of sharing free content pretty well non-stop, I think I have earned the right.
Ren\u00e9e \ud83d\udc1d Cormier I have not found that people respond to an offer of value by contacting you and making a request to use your paid services. Yes, they engage. Yes they comment. They may even share the content but they don't take the most important step and graduate to paid services. The definintion of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results. My original ezine was distributed on ListBot, a free service. It was acquired by LinkEchange. They shelved it and replaced it with an inferior paid service, ListBuilder. Pay to distribute a publication that had not generated 1 cent in 6 years did not make good business sense to me. I put out a call to "keep Spice of the Month Accelerated Ezine free". http://www.thetrainingoasis.com/ezine.html If even 10% of my over 4000 subscribers had contributed the cost of a cup of coffee, I would have continued to publish it. That would have covered the cost of the paid service. Not even one person contributed. I archived the content and converted the content to pay to view. Most years it has generated enough to pay for my webhosting and Internet access. I haven't been promoting it a lot lately but I will start again and eventually update the look and increase the pricing.
it is ridiculous that anyone would be criticized for creating content to promote their business on beBee. You just are free to unfollow them. This is how I see the appropiate approach: https://www.bebee.com/producer/@javierbebee/give-without-expecting-anything-in-return

Phil Friedman

6 years ago #16

#26
My question, Anne, is why those who profess to have been so successful in generating business using "non-promotional" content marketing care a whit about what other people do. And why some of them spend so much time telling others what they should not be doing. Oh wait, I get it. They want to help the rest of us secure more business. What a pile of bull chips. My core business is offline consulting in the marine industry. Anyone interested can see a photo-illustrated portfolio of prior projects at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/friedmanphil/ But for the record, all of the business I've secured, which can be directly attributed to my online presence, has been from my activities on LinkedIn, including both work in boatyard management, yacht construction project management, and marine industry marketing writing and several magazine feature writing gigs. To date, my presence on beBee has not generated dollar one for me, except in connection with an online writing improvement course that I offer --- a situation I still hope to change -- which is why I've embarked on a program of more overt marketing promotion. http://tinyurl.com/y7nxel9l How it is all going to shake out is a question in my mind because my business related posts are achieving better engagement numbers on LI than on beBee. And I suspect that beBee has become de facto indifferent to serious business activity, witness some of the reactions you are experiencing here and the rather poor membership numbers in the business-related hives. Cheers!
#21
I agree with you. This is how it SHOULD work. "The point of "content marketing" is to provide help and information for people so that they will recognize one's expertise, experience, etc, resulting in being retained and being paid." This is NOT how it has been working either with blogs or, before that, ezines. The only business it has generated it blogging business. It's been quite a bit of blogging business but that is not my core service. Very few people other than coaches and consultants working with small businesses or entrepreneurs have been successful in generating business this way. This strategy seems to work in the B2C space not the B2B space where decision making is multi-tiered and senior executives rarely see the content.
#24
It is too soon to gauge how effective it is to run more promotional posts from time to time. I have not been using this strategy for very long.

Phil Friedman

6 years ago #13

#19
Anne, beBee actively markets itself as a platform on which "business" people can connect with one another because, in the words of Javier 🐝 beBee and Matt 🐝 Sweetwood, people like to do business with other people who share common non-business interests with them. Consequently, it seems ridiculous to me that anyone would be criticized for promoting their business on beBee -- for how can one do business with someone, if you don't know what their business is? Or what their background is? Following is a comment I made on a post by Jim Murray when this same issue came up there: "...It seems to me that Peter Altschuler is entitled to his opinion. What he is not entitled to do is represent his idiosyncratic feelings about writers promoting themselves and their businesses on social media as somehow definitive. For it is not, witness the long-standing practices followed on LinkedIn and beBee from their respective inceptions. I personally have for a long time added author's notes and an "optional to read" business pitch at the end of each of my long-form posts. I initially began the practice as a simple counter-measure to LI's "new" policy of appending the posts of "Influencers" to the ends of mine, thereby turning me into a warm-up act for them. I figured that my pile of bull chips at the end of each post would make it more difficult for readers to accidentally wander onto the "Influencer" posts. But no matter why I started doing that, I continue to do so. And why not? If you don't want to read it, you don't have to. And if it annoys you just being there, well, don't read my posts..." -- PLF
#16
I have not found that to be the case at all Peter Altschuler. In fact, I once archived my popular free ezine despite the fact that it had thousands of subscribers. People just took and took and took. They never migrated to other services. Just giving away free content for 6 years was not an effective business strategy. For the past 14 years, people have paid to access the archives. http://www.thetrainingoasis.com/ezine.html I have left them in the original format and the pricing has remained the same. Whenever the format is updated, the price will go up. Giving content away for free and never saying a word about your services is a great strategy go go broke.
#15
So what exactly do you expect businesses to post about Dean Owen? Are they to perpetually give away free tips and advice? It's funny but I don't think it's possible for businesses to give away enough free tips to generate enough income for their owner. Are they to post puzzles and trivia like individuals do on their personal Facebook pages? Watch my video. ANY company would fire employees who spend their days doing that. What exactly do you expect people to share and how do you expect them to market their businesses?

Dean Owen

6 years ago #10

It is a shame that beBee seems to be overrun by people marketing their services/expertise (in a condescending manner) and this will drive away seriously good writers like Peter Altschuler. It will also hinder growth. I am a bit dissapointed in the recent strategy, it was all looking so promising. I do hope beBee management begin to understand what will really drive exponential growth of this network and that is making it a fun place and a convenient and essential communication tool for non-marketers. A feed dominated by marketers, life coaches, social media experts will never attract the masses. The masses maybe can handle a feed with 10% marketing, but nothing more.
#7
Jim Murray you will be able to remove comments on your posts soon :) Enjoy beBee.
Thank you Anne \ud83d\udc1d Thornley-Brown, MBA. 🐝🐝🐝🐝

Jim Murray

6 years ago #7

Charlene Norman. This is the spirit of beBee in action.

Jim Murray

6 years ago #6

Thanks Anne \ud83d\udc1d Thornley-Brown, MBA. You are a real breath of fresh air on beBee. In my response to the commenters in question, I was quick to point out that this was really only a place to park our initial presentation so that we would be able to send links as opposed to attachments to the people were were contacting. (mostly off line, because that's the way you have to do it in Canada). These commenters have polluted the comment stream so I have placed this piece on another blog site and Char and I will use that instead. Too bad really as it kind of hurts beBee, because the people who would have been directed here would have also had a chance to explore the site. My problem is that the main criticism of my post was that the commenter stated that he came to beBee because he was sick of this sort of thing on LinkedIn. I feel bad that he had that experience but the fact of the matter is that an an independent (small) business person, he is not even close to being in my target audience, so this should have actually been a scroll-by for him. Thanks again for your thoughtful comment on the post and this piece which everybody should read. jim

Lance 🐝 Scoular

6 years ago #5

👥ed 🐝🐝🐤🐳🔥🚲

Milos Djukic

6 years ago #4

#4
Lance \ud83d\udc1d Scoular! :)

Lance 🐝 Scoular

6 years ago #3

Anne, having read this and Bullet Proof by Jim Murray and the interactions, in the words of an earlier wordsmith, there is "Much Ado About Notthing." Gary Vaynerchuk @GaryVee wrote a book "Jab jab jab right hook" and often comments on his #dailyvee YouTube's it is NOT give give give sell but Give Give Give Ask - without expectation. I see no issue here. Godspeed in your endeavors: Anne \ud83d\udc1d Thornley-Brown, MBA@ann Jim Murray@jim Charlene Norman

Milos Djukic

6 years ago #2

cc. Jim Murray

Articles from Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA

View blog
6 years ago · 3 min. reading time

It is no secret that the organic reach of LinkedIn content has declined significantly in recent year ...

6 years ago · 2 min. reading time

"Avoid loud and aggressive persons, for they are vexatious to the spirit. " · Desiderata · Most peo ...

6 years ago · 2 min. reading time

Wallflower · A person who has no one to dance with or who feels excluded at a party. · To put it ano ...

Related professionals

You may be interested in these jobs

  • CH Framing Ltd.

    framer-carpenter

    Found in: Talent CA 2 C2 - 6 days ago


    CH Framing Ltd. Abbotsford, Canada

    Education: Secondary (high) school graduation certificate · Experience: 1 year to less than 2 years · Work site environment · Dusty · Work setting · Various locations · Tasks · Read and interpret blueprints, drawings and sketches to determine specifications and calculate requirem ...

  • Golderado Contracting Corp

    Skid Steer

    Found in: Talent CA C2 - 9 hours ago


    Golderado Contracting Corp Calgary, Canada

    Skid Steer & Labourer Snow Removal Crew · At Golderado, we're constantly pushing the limits of what we've done in the past - propelling ourselves toward bigger and better opportunities, while exploring new market sectors and services. So, it only seems natural that we'd hire peop ...

  • Northern Property REIT

    Property Administrator

    Found in: Talent CA C2 - 9 hours ago


    Northern Property REIT Inuvik, Canada

    At Northview, we are a passionate, community-focused team dedicated to making our properties the best they can be. Headquartered in Calgary, AB, we currently operate in nine provinces and two territories, managing over 14,600 multi-residential units, 1.25 million sq. feet of comm ...