Sharing Not Selling Is the Name of the Social Media Game

Effectively participating on social media sites takes a complete mental change from traditional advertising and promotion.

In the past, when you saw a newspaper or magazine advertisement or watched a TV ad, you had no opportunity to interact with the company promoting its products or services. This is definitely a one-way communication model.

Today social media sites enable consumers to engage in dialogue with companies. For example, if a company announces a new product on the company's Facebook Page, a potential buyer can ask a question about the product and expect an answer.

Now this two-way communication can be scary to some companies because consumers can easily complain publicly about a company's products or services.

Yes, this is a risk. But it is less of a risk if you learn about a problem immediately and jump on the opportunity to fix the problem. The alternative is for a problem to affect many more people before you learn about it, at which time it may be much harder to fix.

This attitude of sharing information rather than selling is the central premise of social media. And this extends to people on social media helping others.

Thus I was rather surprised to get an email from someone who had connected with me on LinkedIn saying she "didn't know that Linkedin involved imposing on people."

I was rather startled by this comment and rather stumped at first how to reply. Finally I responded:

"Social media is about helping others — if you truly help others then when you ask for help yourself it shouldn't be thought of as imposing. It's really a very different world than what most of us have experienced in the past."

Bottom line? When you participate on social media you should first think of sharing information with others. Once you've done this, you can ask for help without excessive worrying about "imposing on people."

© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic LLC.

Get the free information "8 Social Media Marketing Mistakes" and "Social Media Marketing Does Not Magically Work; You Have to Work It" at www.facebook.com/millermosaicsocialmedia