Last week, I had the pleasure of writing this guest post on Spin Sucks about the importance of building community with influencers, rather than taking the old PR tactic of just pitching at them. This notion was validated further at the Radian6 Social User Conference in a panel – Know Your Audience. Paraphrasing the panelists: 

Enable your passionate fans to become influencers…Influencers owe you nothing.

The idea of pitching is for the birds. Here, you’re alerting.

What excellent comments to demonstrate how traditional tactics must change in the social space.

Social media, as an extension of your PR and marketing, provides a place to maintain a community of influencers (likely, customers and fans). These people are there for the same reasons – connections, relationships, shared ideas. They are not going to be receptive to a pitch in the traditional sense! In fact, they’re likely to see right through it as a slimy promotional effort.

Think about it. What do you really stand to gain from a generalized pitch tossed out to a bunch of influencers who owe you nothing in return?

It sounds simple (Thanks, Shonali!) but really, it’s about human connections that occur in conversation, at the point of need. Or, it’s a story you share with a group of people who have self-identified that they want to hear from you. And, they’ll talk back. They’ll ask questions, and they’ll decide how and if and when they want to do something with that information.

Remember…they owe you nothing. If anything, you owe them the decency of a positive experience. (In fact, if they don’t have that, they’ll just leave.) Give them what they are looking for, and that’s when you’ll start to see some value in the interactions.

You just can’t jump into the social space and force traditional tactics and expect them be effective. In order for your voice to be heard and more importantly, shared, you need to build, listen and engage your social community. Make the investment. It’s worth it.