How being an introvert helps in social media marketing

An introvert? You mean like anti-social?

A while ago, I mentioned that I’m an introvert. Without getting into too much detail, it means that I recharge energy alone and use energy to interact with people. No, that’s not a way of saying I’m anti-social, just wired differently. In practical terms, it means that it takes a lot out of me to be “on” in most social situations – especially in groups or when put on the spot. I can only do it for a short while and even then I have to psych myself up for it.

How can an introvert succeed in marketing?

But that doesn’t make any sense, right? How can you succeed in marketing if being around people drains you? Doesn’t marketing mean you’re out and about and around people all the time? Shaking hands, making small talk, talking about business, all that jazz – the whole winning friends and influencing people thing? How can you work in marketing if you’re not out there pushing what you have to offer?

Now we get to something interesting.

Social media marketing is relationships

Duh, right? It’s common sense. But remember what Dr. Lecter told us about simplicity. What is the nature of social media? What does it do? What needs does it seek to fulfill? The word that springs immediately to mind: connect.

And right off the bat, it makes you wonder: connect what? This is social media, right? So it’s obvious we’re connecting people.

Connecting people is the essence of social media.

But introverts are drained by people. Doesn’t that put us right back at square one?

Not exactly.

Push and pull marketing

I use push and pull to describe two different approaches to marketing.

Push marketing is what most people think about when they think of marketing. You look for ways to tell people about what you’re doing and how great it is. Extroverts excel at push marketing. There’s nothing more they like than meeting new people – lots of them, even all at once – and talking to them.

Pull marketing works more indirectly. With pull marketing, you look for ways to draw people to you. You figure out ways to listen. This is where introverts shine.  Talk to a lot of strangers? We’ll pass. But setting up something where we can think and observe – now, that’s interesting.

Think of push and pull marketing as fishing. Push marketing is the bait. Pull marketing is the hook. You need both to catch people.

Pull marketing for social media

Seriously, social media is simple (Thank you, Dr. Lecter – I’d invite you to dinner but . . . yeah). The best way to get social media to do what it does is for us introverts to do what we do.

It’s easy to get distracted by trends, buzzwords, and Seth Godin. So much so that a lot of people go around chasing glamor instead of doing what works.

What works in social media marketing? Building meaningful relationships. Ironically, people spend a lot of time, energy, and money trying to avoid doing just that!

It’s like playing the lottery. And I don’t mean a scratcher or a Pick 3 every now and then. I mean the people who play the lottery. Every day, without fail. You even have people buying books, CDs, subscriptions to lottery websites, and even ordering Chinese food for the numbers inside fortune cookies.

But the fact of the matter is that if those people had saved and invested what they gambled (including what they spend on tools to help them gamble better), they’d have real wealth. In some cases, even if you played the odds (time and resources permitting) and won the big payoff, you’d have less money than if you simply put it aside and invested it.

Here it is, folks: if you treat social media marketing as a gamble, you’re going to lose (That goes for everything, not just marketing). Because the house always wins.

What does this mean for you?

Use social media for what they’re good for. Definitely do your research. Certainly spend your time wisely. Leverage what push marketing has revealed. Get creative with what you say. But there is no shortcut other than connecting with people. Which brings us to . . .

What introverts bring to marketing

This is where introverts get sold short. And that’s too bad because we bring something that’s really important but easy to overlook.

We already have enough people trying to get something from us. We’re already bombarded with messages treating us like things instead of people. We get enough of being treated like customers, consumers, demographics, focus groups, target audiences, subscribers, and everything under the sun except human beings.

People seek meaningful connections. The best way to do that is to show you want to learn about them.

Go out of your way to hear their experiences and understand their point of view. Make it your business to know them as people. Find ways to engage them with something that interests them. Doing these things takes active listening and perceptive dialogue (not monologue!).

This is what introverts do.

And there’s another reason why you shouldn’t discount our more internal way of processing things. According to many studies, about 25%-40% of us are introverts.

And who better to understand us than ourselves?

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