Is Social Just Very Casual SPAM?

I woke up this morning and my husband asked me if I was the one that just spammed him on Facebook. I was horrified. It was against very essence of being. I am a person inspired by good design, creative ideas and cool things that move.

A mass marketer I am not.

I immediately realized what I did and it got me thinking. It is so crazy in today’s world that social has so many complexities most of us don’t even probably realize. It’s like when you get on a phone and immediately use your “phone voice.”

You feel stupid doing it, you know it’s not you, but you do it anyway. Why?

I had an Ah Ha moment this morning and really most of this week. I had a few challenges and hit rock bottom. At that moment you do truly know who your friends are, who really care, to tell you the truth and sometimes it takes those moments to re-center and be yourself.

Can change sometimes means don’t change?

What happens I think is that your professional works starts overlapping your life – particular with social networks. It starts with a fuzzy grey area and then it starts to absorb and define who you are.

You are at work more hours than you are with your family, you can help but be tainted by what has been ingrained and trained into you. They call this “professionalism.” And being in marketing there are some evils that come with that territory.

Last night I tried to be the marketer that I am not.

I essentially spammed all my friends on Facebook with a one click direct message. It was so simple. I gave them a marketing messaging, copied form an email – totally wrong audience, written for totally a different channel.

Most people left the conversion, some gave a thumbs up, some wrote back “did someone hijack your phone?” Looking back I admit it was stupid. And didn’t really get that many responses that I expected. These are people that know me.

I never direct message them and though I had a few free tickets. At the time and delirium of the late hour of the night it seemed like a good idea, and what the heck, it could be helping people. I believed in the product, I helped create it and wanted my good friends and family to see it.

But it totally missed the mark. And there I find a truth I uncovered. So simple. Be yourself. Do what you do best, know your strengths and don’t try to do something just because you think you are supposed to and it works for other people.

Not me, I can’t write. I misspell words frequently. I ramble and most of the time people at work make me rewrite things several times to get down to the main points. This is why I turned to graphic design. In visuals I could take complex ideas and simplify – and I was pretty darn good at it. So why did I change?

It took a few dear friends and colleagues to call me out this week. I wasn’t being Erica. And I wasn’t happy.

I have been play an Account Executive role in my job which has been quite a challenge. After hitting 40, you would think you would understand your patterns, know your strengths and be able say No to the thing you know by history you are just not good at. So why don’t you?

Because there is something ingrained in each one of us that change is good and makes us better. Learning new skills will help you in the long run. It takes you out of your comfort zone, makes you feel like you are back in high school and even causes some tears when you make rookie mistakes.

Again, like the one I did last night. I messaged my friends to read the first unfunnel eBook called Marketing in B.S. I did the illustrations and have been listed as the editor (although my Dad would really laugh at that one). I told them to do something and to “Do it Right Now.” I gave them no background or context to understand the product. I became a direct marketer. Ouch.

After my husband remark, I re-looked at what I had sent. OMG. I immediately responded with an apology, told the truth that I copied it from an email and that this was for the unfunnel.com marketing audience. My Facebook messaging won’t stop bleeping.

So lesson learned? 

Don’t overthink it. Authentic rules. Accept your spelling mistakes. Progress not perfection rules. The apology I sent back on Facebook could have been a cleverly contrived social marketing messaging strategy. But it was not. At that is why it worked.

Signing off from blogging for awhile. Now that unfunnel has some “real” writers I don’t have to embarrass myself anymore. You can find my rants in the uFlush series. So much easier to be successful in a world of bubble text and stick figures 😉