A Lesson in the Not So Unwritten Rules of Social Media

Earlier this week, internet marketer Matt Bacak, who calls himself “The Powerful Promoter,” discovered how not to use social media. Bacak put out a press release on P.R. Web claiming that he had “achieved another social networking milestone” by becoming one of the top followed commentators on the microblogging site Twitter. The press release went on to state that ealerie this year, Bacak had surpassed the top 5000 “friends” mark on Facebook placing him in the top 500 facebook users.

Up until this point, I didn’t know who Bacak was. According to this website, he specializes in email marketing. With that in mind, at first glance, the press release makes sense (although as is so typical with poorly written press releases, I’m not so sure I see how this as “newsworthy.”) Bacak wanted to show the world that he knows how to successfully grow and manage social media networks for marketing purposes.

However, the press release was quickly picked on internet content sharing site “Digg” with a headline I won’t repeat here. The comments that followed both there and on Twitter provide a lesson on how not to use social media. I won’t go into detail here but you can see them by following those links.

As I see it, Bacak made two mistakes. First, social media is about becoming a member of a community and giving back to that community. The world of social media is a world of conversations in which all are expected to contribute something to the discussion.

When you look at Bacak’s Twitter profile, you can see that while he has 2,000 some people following his comments, he in turn only follows 32 Twitter users. This is basically the equivalent of shouting to those who will listen as opposed to participating in the medium.

The second thing is that the press release makes it obvious that Bacak has approached social media as a competition to gain the most “friends” or followers. I spoke to this concept in an earlier post. Yes, if you want to spam your contacts, then a huge network is good. However, spammers on social media networks will quickly be spurned as such or kill the network entirely.

And while I’m sure that Bacac has gained some serious publicity from the press release (I had never heard of him before), most of us don’t want that type of publicity. At the same time, I’m sure he has increased the number of people watching him on Twitter. It’s sort of like people turning to watch a car wreck.

The lesson to take from this is that the world of social media quickly vets itself. It is not a place for ego and it is not a competition. It is about a shared conversation and giving to the group. When you provide something of value, people will respond. Do it well and you form powerful relationships that can be benificial to all involved.