Buy Today and Save! (Or, How to Turn Off Your Followers Immediately) By Mickie Kennedy

Share

Did you want to stop reading after that headline? I don’t blame you. A sales pitch can be so aggravating. After all, the whole DVR industry has made a gazillion dollars on the premise that nobody wants to watch commercials.

The same is true for social media updates; fans and followers that may come across your posts are like everybody else: they don’t want a sales pitch.

But you have a product you want people to notice, you say?

Stop trying gimmicky advertising techniques to get your point across. There’s a better way.

Craft a Story

Like writing a press release, crafting a great Facebook or Twitter post (that hopefully links back to your page) requires that you craft a story around your product/service before you pitch it over your network.

Let’s take home automation, for example. Your company can set up a customer’s house so that the doors lock, the alarm goes on, and all the lights go off all with the push of a button. That’s an awesome product, but how should you begin pitching it to your social followers?

You could, perhaps, write a blog post and focus the post on home security and crime statistics in your area. Or write it to focus on new apps for the phone that work with the automation. The gist is that while you have a great product, the way to get people to notice it is to write a story that gets to them personally.

Follow the inverted pyramid where the most important information is at the top, followed by less important information and rounding it out with the least important information. The top section should be the 5W content (who, what, when, where, and why) and then go from there. It doesn’t require marketing buzzwords or a sales pitch.

If you can get people interested in the story on your blog via social media, they’ll be much more likely to discover and use your product.

Pay Attention to Your Headline

Instead of “Home Automation is Totally Affordable, Save Today!”, why not try “After Spike of Home Invasions, Police Chief Recommends Home Automation.” The second title is interesting, has emotional appeal, and it makes people curious. The first title sounds like a commercial and is a definite turn-off.

After you have a great story to draw people in, come up with a short, punchy post for your social networks — think of this as your headline. You can even use the title of the blog post you just wrote (I do this all the time, and it works great).

You still get the message across about what you have to offer, but people don’t feel like they are being sold to. It’s a win-win.

How do you draw people to your blog or website via social media? Let us know in the comments!

mickie

This article was written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases PR in Baltimore, MD. You can read more great advice on the PR Fuel blog.