Why I’m not following your brand and God I feel old.

The other day I logged into my Facebook account to find 2 page invitations. Nine times out of ten, when I see these, I ignore them and go about my day wishing slight ill-will upon the fringe-friend that thought that I would be interested in their company’s or friend’s company’s stream of feces.

Ok maybe feces was a bit strong, but what struck me about these particular invitations that how un-targeted they were towards me. One was for a dentist and the other was for a chiropractor. I am very happy with my current dentist, I don’t need a chiropractor and why would a so called friend of mine suggest that I follow these Facebook pages in the first place? And more importantly what good do consumers get out of following brands on social networks? What kinds of companies lend themselves well to promotion on social networks? How did we get to a point where I’m referring to legitmate business operations on Facebook as “feces?” Why am I asking so many questions in a row?

First off, let me say that these questions completely relate back to my topic-du-jour of yesterday, “Content Overload.” Futhermore, I think that it’s important to remember why people get into social media in the first place. Sit back, and let me share my story.

The year was 2004. Or 2005. Whatever. I was much better looking then. So I’m sitting in my dorm room at Loyola New Orleans, probably listening to OAR or thinking about how awesome Boondock Saints 1 was, and I hate that I have to refer to that cinematic masterpiece as ‘Boondock Saints 1′ because they decided to follow it up with a flaming turd like ‘All Saints Day,’ but someone probably hit me up on AIM (remember AIM?) and told me about a new website for college students. This website would let you set up a profile, join groups and you could also write on other people’s “walls.” “Jackpot!,” I thought, “finally a way to share information with my college buddies and everyone will finally know how cool and smart I am!” Naturally, we used this new Facebook platform to share dick and fart jokes for 3 straight years.

We liked Facebook because it was personal. We liked it because it was absolutely limited to our immediate group of friends. We liked it because our parents couldn’t see it.

Well, as we all know, this sense of community has slowly been taken away from Facebook users over the past 3 or so years as the network has grown. First our friends at uncool colleges were allowed to join. Then our friends at community colleges were allowed to join. And then, gasp, our parents were suddenly hitting us up on Facebook and asking what’s up.

The reason that I share my personal story is this: when your company joins a social network, you have to put it into the context of that network. On Facebook, you have to realize that many users still see it as a way to contact their close group of personal friends and ONLY their close group of personal friends. Marketers would do well to tread lightly when sending out mass invites for anything on Facebook. The danger for any company effectively spamming a group of people on Facebook is that they will be seen as first, an uninvited outsider, and secondly as an annoyance. Your shiny new Facebook account for XYZ business could actually hurt your bottom line and alienate potential customers. There are already ads on Facebook, we don’t need any more of those.

I would suggest asking yourself the following 3 questions before asking people to become fans of your business on Facebook or Twitter:

1.) Do I have a business that lends well to social media? If you want to be successful in the social media realm, you must peddle something that people like talking about. If you are a dentist, ask yourself this question: “when was the last time I overheard someone on the bus talking about how much they like going to the dentist?” or “will people see my Facebook page and think ‘gee, I love dentists! I think I’ll set up an appointment rightthissecond!’ or will they think ‘wow, I think that they should use their Facebook time to squeeze in some more patients because last time I tried to set up an appointment, they asked me if I was free sometime in July 2013.’”

2.) What methods will I use to promote myself? Picking the social media platform or platforms to promote yourself is a huge part of the process. As I mentioned above, tread carefully on Facebook because it’s very personal to some people. I would suggest that when in doubt, use Twitter because it’s easy to figure out what kinds of topics people are talking about and identify people that might be interested in your business based on keyword searches.

3.) Do I have time to create and maintain a social media presence? This may be the most important question that you ask yourself. Unless you are willing to put in the effort to interact with your customers or potential customers, get out of the space immediately. The key word here is interact. No one wants to feel like they are getting a hard sell every time they log in to their network of choice. We are on these networks to interact with people, not to have ads shoved down our throats. It’s the equivalent of walking into a cocktail party and yelling about your new product or service or whosiewhatsit. Everyone will look at you like you are crazy, and you’ll be lucky if even Rusty, the benevolent bartender will talk to you.