How are charity Muggers like Social media Smuggers?

Chuggers aka Charity Muggers, are a term given to people who hang around shopping malls with tins representing charities, where they make you feel obliged to put some spare change in the tin, and make you feel worse for ignoring them.

In fact the UK Government is now reviewing how Charities conduct themselves out in public due to a backlash from communities, who find their direct begging approach annoying, added to that the fact that some individuals were not even charities, but just masquerading and pocketing the money.

Fat cat charity corruption

Even at the very top echelons of corporate charities there is corruption, and a recent report has found that the top CEO’s earn staggering amounts compared to the average British worker.

This type of ‘in your face’ fund raising is not much different than the way many conduct themselves on Social Media, they add anyone and everyone they can as friends to Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media accounts and then just start selling direct, then sit back and wait for the money to pour in, but wait hang on, there’s over a billion people on Facebook why hasn’t anyone clicked my advert?

As a UK Government Registered small business mentor, I often have conversations with new start –ups and they are all excited by the medium of social media and how they will be able to advertise to millions for free, and it breaks my heart,  but I have to give them a sharp reality check and bring them crashing down to Earth.

There are absolutely no short cuts worthy to build you a decent brand. Social Media is 90% branding, as in people getting to know you and trust you, and unless you live in a world dominated by baseless one night stands, trust and time will mean a lot to you.

Branding is the unpalatable, non income earning drain on your business and time that you will not see results for what seems like an eternity. No one does dashboards with KPI’s and analytics for your brand feeling, therefore many can’t and should not sell social media as a service.

Biz-find Brand loyalty

In my social media training workshops in UK, many are expecting me to show them all these simple automated programs where it will spin a blog with some fancy app then sit back as it posts everywhere for you at certain times of the day, yes I know of them and never use them, and then are totally shocked when I begin by extoling the essence of good writing skills and how to apply it to consistent blogs without outsourcing any part of it!

They are also a bit shaken by how we will manually share our altruistic blog to each social media site with a different heading and make sure we manually add to each category and to each group and each of the hundreds of communities that we must join first. Many feel exhausted after the workshop, even the ones who admitted they will probably have to hire someone to do it for them and get help, at least they now know what is expected of them to make it count with social media marketing.

Social media is not an effective ground for direct selling, classified ads work to a certain extent as people are always interested in domestic values. Facebook groups now have a selling button where you, and other members can sell to your group.

Here is where you see if you have built up enough trust, because if you have shared yourself as a person who is real, relatable, and passionate about how your business can help others enough online, so much so; the search engines will know, and your Facebook members will know, that you are trustworthy, and you know enough about your industry to be useful to them.

From a selling point of view U.S.P.’s are insular; we should be concentrating on the: U.B.P.’s (Unique Buying Points) and thinking from the client’s end of the table. What is the first thing good sales person do naturally? Build rapport of course, and with rapport comes trust and all selling is based on trust period.

So ask yourself are you a SMUGGER a Social Media Marketing Mugger who either shames people into buying something they neither want or need, or just hits and hopes that one or two people in Facebook’s billion will see you? Which we all know is next to no chance, Facebook charges for that now!

To be pulled through a real social media marketing training course kicking and screaming and to learn how to foster trust through your hard work and build effective relationships online for business in the long run contact Netmedia