I hate spam.
Not the faux-meat shaped like dog food, but
the unwanted rubbish that appears in my email inbox every morning. The type of
communication that leaves me disappointed that of the 100 emails I’ve got
waiting for me, only three are actually real people with something for me.
I’ve noticed how much it’s infiltrating
social media as well. The whole “fake news” movement means that we are becoming
jaded to social media posts in our own feed, which is reinforced every time we
see “Such cute dogs – Number #7 will melt your heart” or “You won’t believe
Back to the Future was released 32 years ago.” (I would actually, I was there
when it first screened).
I’ve studied spammers as a part of my day
job: I write social media strategies and content for clients, and decided to
get my head around what spammers do, and what impact it has. By
spammers, I don’t necessarily just mean those people who sit in a sweaty
internet café in the Ukraine or Togo looking to steal your bank details, but those companies (legit or not) who
end up flooding your inbox with stuff you don’t want.
That’s what defines spam. It’s not the fact
that the communication is illegal or dodgy. Spam defines communication that is unwanted
and irrelevant.
As I’ve moved into fiction writing,
I’ve seen authors make those same mistakes (and I’ve even been tempted by a few
myself).
Clearly we don’t want to be spammers,
putting people off from engaging with us in the social media space, or when our eNewsletter arrives, so what can
we learn from them? Well, we can learn
from the five things they do wrong. And I offer them to you as filters through which you can put your own newsletters, social media content and web sites.
1. An overfamiliarity with me
We’ve all gotten
that spam email. The one that reads like it’s come from a long-lost friend,
despite the fact that you’ve got no idea who the sender is. This type of email sounds like this:
“Hey David!
Great to see you doing so well in business!
But I’m sure you’d love to do so much better, so lucky for you that I’ve
got the product that will deliver exactly what you need!”
This is how I
respond to this as I read it …
“Hey David! (Um, who are you?) Great to see you
doing so well in business! (How would you know?) But I’m sure you’d
love to do so much better (I don't
actually), so lucky for you (I don’t
believe in luck when it comes to business) that I’ve got the product that
will deliver exactly what you need (How on earth would you know exactly what I need?)!”
Do you know what
that company was offering in that email? I don’t know. I stopped reading, and I
enjoyed shunting their email to the Trash folder. Probably a little too much to
be honest.
So what’s the lesson for authors? Presume nothing and
don’t be too over-personal unless you’ve earned the right first. Learn about
your audience first, THEN deliver something for them. Learn what they read,
what they like, what they respond to and what puts them off. Then use THAT as a
base for your connection with them.
2. Expecting way too much,
way too soon
I get the emails
that are heavy on the sales pitch FROM DAY ONE.
It doesn’t work. This is what
that email looks like:
“As an
introductory offer, we will give you 20% off, but only if you respond in the
next 14 minutes …”
Sorry, but I
don’t care about 20% off if it turns out that it will be a 100% waste of
money. I need time to research that. So that
manufactured rush to get me to respond actually is counter-productive, because
now I want to know why there’s such a hurry to push me into a sale.
As authors, we
can’t expect everyone to read our elevator pitch and then buy our book. That process takes time for most people. They want to experience our ability, read some
excerpts or be impressed with some recommendations. Then they'll weigh up whether or not we're worth it.
Lesson for authors: a small percentage of your
audience will buy after the first interaction. Cater for the majority, who want
to know more. Much more. And understand that your communication isn’t supposed
to open and close a transaction in one hit. It’s supposed to add another brick
to the wall.
3. Being a salesperson first
and foremost
I subscribe to a
few eNewsletters, and will pretty much give anything a try in this field, although I
am pretty ruthless when it comes to which ones I delete.
The ones I flick
have one thing in common – they’re all thinly-disguised sales pitches. When I
engage with an organization or an individual, and my expectation is that
they’ll be providing me with advice, ideas, challenges or information that I
can absorb – and they then do nothing but sell me stuff - I’m outta there.
I know some
authors who constantly post that their book is available on Amazon all the time. In the end I mentally switch off
from anything they post, and that costs them the important bridge that social
media is supposed to build. That's the case for many customers. They don't just stop reading the sales-related content. They stop reading everything.
Lesson for authors: Build bridges, then apply a toll.
Resist the urge to sell, sell, sell ALL THE TIME. There is nothing wrong with selling, but you
need to have people’s trust, respect and interest before they’ll accept your
sales pitch.
4. Firing off a million
emails, hoping to make one hit
You might have
received those emails that look like they went to a million people, but still
have a quasi-personal message about them.
This is what
that looks like: “Hey customer, we all want to do better in life, regardless of
what we want to achieve. Our product will do everything you need it to do, in a
way that will really make your life turn around!”
Okay, so here’s
my problem with this: in trying to be vague enough to reach everyone, they end
up hitting no-one. When you’re online, you really need to target who you are
speaking to (regardless of whether it’s a blog post, social media post or even
web page). And calling me customer
instantly devalues all the other faux-personal style of the rest of the email
or post. I know it's not for me.
If you’re an
author, you need to speak more personally to people. It might be harder work,
but it’s worth it. (And if you're wondering how this works with #1, the key to it is finding that happy medium. I'm happy to receive your eNewsletter if it says "Dear David", but not "Hey Dave ol' buddy, ol' pal".
Lesson for authors: if you’ve got a range of different
groups following you (writers, readers, Christian friends and contacts and
schoolteachers [for example]), then write four posts – one targeted to each
group. It’s four times the work, granted, but it’s also the best way to engage
with people – at their level. One post
that tries to reach everyone just doesn’t engage with people.
5. Tell a story as if I’ve
got the time to read it
I used to follow
a real estate company because I liked what they had to say. In bite-sized chunks of
information, they’d talk about what was happening in property and zeroed it on
what I was interested in. I could digest it all in minutes, and feel informed enough to move on with my day. For deeper stuff, I could always follow their links to information that was a lot more detailed.
Then someone
else took over, and everything changed.
Suddenly their posts and their articles took on a longer feel, and the
writer (the new boss) felt that they needed to qualify everything first. That
meant they were talking about themselves for paragraphs, before getting to what
I was interested in in the last paragraph (sometimes this also went for
Facebook posts).
I lasted a week.
You see, I
haven’t got a heap of time to invest in reading this material. And I don’t want
to waste time on information that doesn’t engage with me. So I don't read.
One thing I’ve found in business is that perfectly sums up the usual social media user. We all want to know what’s in it for us in the first five words. Not invest five minutes reading some waffle until the writer eventually gets to the point.
That’s the last
thing authors can learn from: get to the point. You’ve got a handful of words to
connect with your audience, so use them.
Lesson for authors: start every post with a statement
that connects with your audience. Talk in their language, framing what you’ve
got to say in the best way possible so a reader can digest it according to what
they want. Don’t give them the history of the genre, give them the reason to
read your book. Don’t go on and on about the fact you’ve got a newsletter –
tell them why they’d subscribe. Start with a line that grabs their attention because it's got them in mind.
So that’s how my professional expertise
informs how I connect with readers (and I’m still learning and tinkering).
What is your biggest frustration with spam,
and what can you learn from it?
