Are You Guilty of Spamming your Facebook Friends???
As a conscious business owner the last thing you would ever do is send SPAM emails – right? Well, if you have ever sent a bulk email to your Facebook friends list, then this blog is for you.
There’s been a trend building over the last several months on Facebook that has on a daily basis, filled my inbox with dozens of unwanted solicitations from well meaning “conscious” business owners trying to get the word out about their products, services and events. My experience is not unique, as I’ve talked with others who say they too are getting an increasing number of solicitations in their Facebook inbox.
In my opinion, these Facebook emails are SPAM just as unrequested and unwanted as a Nigerian 419 letter or those never ending offers for free drugs to encourage the growth of certain body parts.
It’s understandable why so many are resorting to spamming their Facebook friends – it is a heck of a lot easier than building a real direct response list – but bad marketing practices have never been the path to a solid and sustainable business. The few sales you gain short term, cannot make up for the damaged relationships and lost credibility over the long term.
Also, while bad marketing practices are annoying when applied to your own products and services, spamming as an affiliate can be grounds for loss of affiliate promotion privileges and even forfeiture of commissions in some cases.
If treating your Facebook friends as a direct response list is not the way to go, what are the options?
Here are my suggestions for upgrading Facebook marketing practices and results:
1) Create an event and invite every one of your Facebook friends to the event. The invitation will show up under “Events” and not in their email inbox. Then, and this is VERY important, send confirming emails only to the invitees who reply “yes” or “maybe” and NOT to the ones who do not reply or who say no. Ask your confirmed and maybe attendees to use the Share option on the event page and post the event on their wall or share with individually selected friends via personal email thereby increasing your exposure to others who will be interested. It’s the Like attracts Like principal, and it works.
2) Create a fan page – which is much more like an opt-in list because by becoming a “fan” the person is essentially saying, “I am interested”. If you are going to be sending marketing emails to your fans on a regular basis, I recommend you give them a heads up right on your fan page. Fan pages are getting very creative, and many businesses are making a fortune from well designed Facebook fan pages. Go for it!
3) Get personal – if you’ve got some “good fit for my stuff” peeps in your friends list (and of course you do), why not send them a personal email inviting them to look at your offer? Yes, a personal email takes more time but it is proven more effective. It also creates an opportunity to maximize the real value of Facebook, which is building relationships. Instead of getting “unfriended” or “blocked” because of unprofessional social media marketing strategy, a personal email could lead you to a new client, a great referral partner or a gold mine of a joint venture partner.
4) Get organized – if you feel you simply must treat your Facebook friends like a direct response list, at least take the time to segment your friends into groups based on demographics or what you perceive their level of interest could be. Minimally this will prevent you from looking like a dork for inviting friends in Montana to a networking coffee in Florida.
These are some of my thoughts on the subject of email marketing via Facebook, and I’d love to hear yours! Comments are welcomed and encouraged but please, hold the blog spam.
Mary Kay Morgan is founder of AffiliateWealthPartners.com the only affiliate and joint venture resource exclusively serving the needs of the conscious business community. Sign up now for our FREE membership into our Affiliate Community and gain access to our library of affiliate tutorials and to our approved list of high integrity, proven affiliate opportunities.
This was awesome information, Mary Kay! Thank you so much for putting this out there because being a Virtual Assistant, I get hundreds of emails a day and a lot of them are Facebook messages from people. I know they don’t mean to Spam me, but it really is treated like that. Thank you for being real about it. You gave EXCELLENT suggestions!
Thank you for the post Mary Kay! I say Ditto. Love the suggestions you made. I almost cringe checking my facebook emails anymore because there are so many spammers of which have never connected with me on my friend or fan page personally. I too understand they do not mean to SPAM but it is just not effective. I totally agree you may get a handful of interested parties but how many are you losing and what are you doing long-term to your reputation in the space?
Great post. Warmly, angela
Great info MaryKay
I too, have started a FB fanpage…and just ask people who may be a good fit…those who I’ve recently ‘friended’
Or will put on my profile things like….If you are interested check this out
My biz partner and I both randomly ‘twitter’ about our FB fanpage…every other day or so
I’ve also found that having our FB “LIKE” on our website has increased our FB presence….or even just popping it into our E-zine as a reminder…..”have you liked us on FB yet?” or “join the conversation on FB”…to encourage like-minded ladies to talk to each other, and be social
Great post Mary Kay – I’ve started unfriending people who spam me with their facebook e-mail! I had one person who was sending 2-3 messages each day. He just didn’t get it.
Agreed and a very good post. I have to give a shout out to Liz Nonnemacher with WickedlyChic.com. We became Facebook Friends because we had several common friends. I didn’t know her, though, really. But about 2 weeks ago, she sent me a PERSONAL Facebook message introducing herself, discussing her business, and asking to connect one on one. We traded a few emails, and now she’s posted one of my blog articles on her website and I’m looking for ways to promote her as well.
It was SO refreshing to be contacted in this personal way (even if she cut and pasted the body and added my name to the top – it was still ONLY to me). This is the right way to build relationships online – not through a zillion mass, impersonal invitations.
Bravo!
Agreed!
Unfortunately my facebook inbox is just junk mail now. If someone sent me a personal note I wouldn’t know it, because I had to turn off all the notifications, I was getting waaaay too many in my inbox people promoting their events, not just an invite but NUMEROUS reminders, etc annoying.
Once I set up my fan page, I’ve used that exclusively to communicate with people, it’s the only thing I check these days…
Bravo, dahhhhling!
Mary Kay,
I completely agree. The issue that you describe here is one reason why I am sometimes less motivated to spend time over in my FB inbox. I would say the majority of messages I receive are exactly as you have outlined here. Over the course of the three years I have been involved with social media – I have really come to embrace the principle that connection matters more than anything. In my experience when people interact in this space with a genuine interest in connecting with others in order to build relationships “first” – that is when the magic really starts to happen. Impersonal bulk emails pushing one’s own agenda is what I would call a complete “disconnect”. Thank you for exploring this.
Amy
I get hit with so much spam via Facebook! So much so that I don’t even check the Facebook app on my blackberry (I keep myself signed off). The only real time I check Facebook is when there’s an event that I’m attending or interested in attending and I want to familiarize myself with some of the people that will be there.
I do have a Facebook Page and I make it pretty clear that the type of content people will see there is along the lines of marketing, design and the web. This way, when I send any updates, it’s expected. They’ve opted in.
Anyway, my opinion is that the relationship always has to come before the sale. So push-marketing tactics, aren’t really going to work.
Really nice work on the blog and this article, You seem to really know what your talking about, good job