photo credit: jcoterhals

Over the past couple of weeks I have been hearing a specific idea come around more and more when it comes to social media and blogging for business: “People don’t care about you, they care about themselves”.  That may seem harsh but it does seem quite true.

Earlier this week I wrote a blog post called “Why your business needs a Facebook page” and the main idea was about how to really connect with your customer.  That is what it’s all about connecting with your customer.  After that post a friend of mine, Rick,  Skype’d me to chat for a few minutes and we got on the topic of social media and how it is very rapidly re-writing the rules.  I made the statement that businesses are having to give up on the idea of broadcasting their message.  What I mean is one-way communication is no longer enough.  Rick said that social media is the “great equalizer”.  I could not agree more.  It used to be that big business could simply ignore the customer and broadcast away.  That is no longer the case.  The customer is back in control. Communication has to go both ways.  There is absolutely no question that social media and social networking has and is continuing to change the face of the Internet, business and marketing.  It has changed many of the old rules.

A couple of weeks ago I was able to be part of a webinar in which the presenter, Taylor Lindstrom from Men With Pens, made the same point.  I believe that her exact words were “People don’t give a damn about you, they care about themselves”.   Absolutely true.

Then a couple of days ago I ran across another video that outlines the same concept.  Here is the video:

So what does all this mean?  It’s simple in my mind.  STOP trying to market your business because of it’s great assets and products and blah, blah, blah.  START trying to figure out what you can do to solve customer’s problems.  THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR PRODUCTS… they care about solutions to their problems.

The video outlines this perfectly.  Before you start figuring out your social media strategy… you need to figure out your content strategy.  Part of that strategy needs to be to engage your customers.  People aren’t just going to check your Twitter feed or your FaceBook account to read what your most recent award was or what product you’re ready to sell them.  They want something valuable to them.  Provide them real content that helps (read: for free).  If you provide value to them… they will come back.

What say you??