Marketing for Shy People: How Social Media Can Help
The following is a guest post by Holly Jackson, the owner of Cottage Copy
I’m Holly, a shy copywriter and marketing consultant, and today I’m here to tell you about why you should use social media. Now I’m not going to talk about all the great advertising benefits that it has, because quite frankly, Laura can do that a hell of a lot better than I can. But I am here to talk to you about how social media can be a godsend for people who are shy and scared of marketing. Like me. And probably, also like you.
The problem is that most people, when you really get down to it, are scared of selling things. Selling things requires you to not only believe that you have something great going on, but that others will agree with you. It’s the second part that scares my clients, and me most days. Many successful business people go through their lives terrified that each new stage of their business will be the one where people find out that they really aren’t all that. If you’re a naturally shy person in the first place, this means that marketing can truly seem like an insurmountable task. After all, the combination of talking about yourself and marketing your products can seem daunting, even to the most outgoing among us.
When I work with clients like this, I tell them to head over to Twitter. This doesn’t always go over well, I’m sorry to say. After all, if marketing scares you, why would you want to spend hours a day talking about people about it? Well, the thing is, that’s not really what Twitter does. Social media doesn’t involve the scary part of being social: the awkward forced conversations, the introducing yourself in front of strangers. It doesn’t involved getting judged based on your clothing, or your young face or squeaky voice. As someone who has a young face and a very squeaky voice, I’m grateful for this every day. When it comes down to it, social media is really about building relationships with people who you’d be friends with anyway. Which is why Twitter is so great: you can build relationships in real time, without all of the real life social pressure that you’d feel at a networking event or a party.
If you’re shy, Twitter is really the perfect marketing tool. There’s something magical that happens when you start using Twitter. You meet some people: usually some great people who you’d like to hang out with anyway if you lived in the same area. And then, they find out what you do. Usually, they also find out that you’re pretty good at it, no matter what you think of yourself. And then, they tell other people. Who then tell more people, who you can also become friends with in an enjoyable and stress free way. And before you know it, you’ve got a network of people who really want to market for you. And you never even had to talk yourself or your business up to anyone.
Twitter in particular gets a bad rap sometimes, mostly because there are so many people who want to abuse it and shout over everyone else. But don’t let that turn you off, please. If you start out by looking to develop friends rather than marketing targets, you won’t find those people anyway. And if you do, it’s easy enough to turn them off by refusing to follow them. All it really takes to build a business on Twitter is a kind heart and a willingness to be open to meeting new people. Two months ago, I didn’t have a business. I now have a business that not only breaks even, but flourishes. I’m incredibly honored to say that I owe most of that to random strangers who I now can’t imagine not having in my life. They retweeted my blogs, they told people that I was awesome, and they told me that even when I thought I was a failure, I’d pick myself back up again. And they were right. As a result, I now tell clients that when they get started, the first thing they should do is grab a Twitter account. If they’re really scared, I offer to introduce them around and orient them myself. It’s that important.
If you don’t know how to market, or the idea of marketing seems like an insurmountable task, go check out Twitter. Make a bio, upload and icon, and say hi to someone. I promise, you’ll be amazed at what can happen.
Holly Jackson is the owner of Cottage Copy, a copywriting and marketing company that specializes in ittybiz marketing. You can find her on Twitter as @copygeniusgirl
