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Since this blog is about using social media to build a brand and market yourself and/or your business, we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about spam and how to avoid adding to the noise out there.  Because let’s face it, we hate spam.  We have enough genuine noise and information overload to deal with without having to filter out the promotional messages from every new medium that gains a foothold in the market.  Increasingly, social media is seen by marketers and PR firms as the latest and greatest way to spread their message and gain exposure.  But the challenge is that the lines between signal and noise are increasingly blurred.  Sarah Lacy, an author and reporter for BusinessWeek.com had a great blog post on this topic today:

Then, there are PR people, many of whom feel it’s not their pitches and relentlessness that’s the problem but the medium. So they take the same messaging– chock full of words like “leading provider” and “world class”– and flit from email to IM to Facebook to Facebook chat to Twitter etc. I was doing an interview for a podcast aimed at PR folks a while back and they asked how PR people should use Facebook, Twitter, et all to pitch me. And I said, they shouldn’t. The single best way to pitch me is still email. The moderator, I guess thinking I didn’t understand the question, said, “Well, but you probably check Twitter or Facebook more right?” First off, I don’t. But if I did, do you think that means I want endless pitches for you lame client cluttering up what’s supposed to be a spot to communicate with my friends and loved ones?

She goes on to say that the best PR firms in the industry are successful by cultivating relationships with reporters and bloggers and asking them what they want to cover.  I think that this concept of relationship is a really important one when it comes to avoiding being a “social spammer”.  When you’re launching a new site or venture, it can be really tempting to blast every blogger who might cover your latest and greatest project, but if you have no relationship, if you don’t read their blog, if you’re just another person trying to get at that blogger’s audience, your chances of success are very low.  On the other hand, if you have a few bloggers or communities that you’ve built relationships with and are regularly communicating with, letting them know about this new thing that you’re genuinely excited about is much more organic and natural, and more likely to result in some positive attention.

Ultimately though (and you’ll hear this again on MightyBrand), strong brands reflect strong cultures.  The best brands out there, both personal and corporate, are driven by a certain type of passion for your customers.  From Sarah’s article again:

Zappos seems to be the best company at wisely leveraging Twitter as this surprise Twitter party they threw at Medjool shows. … I asked Tony about his secrets and he said something similar: That it wasn’t about Twitter, it was about a certain mindset towards your customers. If you don’t have that no social media is going to magically make you a marketing wizard.

We’re still learning ourselves how to cultivate this mindset towards our customers, but we’re going to try and point out some good examples of companies and individuals who are doing it right, and give you some of the best tools and techniques to take that mindset to the social space online.  Where you go from there is up to you.

Just please don’t spam us.