Never start marketing without a credible backstory.
By which I mean: you can’t sell your product to me without selling yourself to me … and you can’t sell yourself to anyone if you don’t have your ducks in a row.
Case in point:
I was just followed by “weightcoachlisa” on Twitter.
This is a marketing occasion. By following me, she’s has created an outbound message to me, announcing her existence and the fact that she’s following me. This creates an opportunity (for her) to be considered (by me) as a candidate for mutual friending. In other words, will I follow weightcoachlisa?
To make that call, I first check out her profile.
- A decent number of tweets … so not a complete newbie
- Lots of followers … might be worthwhile
- Lots of following, in fact more than followers … so probably an aggressive follower, a social media climber, and maybe not worthwhile
- Tweets are all quotes … this is an automated account, possibly
- Nice profile pic … looks good, but could it be a fake? Is it too good?
Some good, some bad. The backstory’s not good enough yet for me to follow. But there is a link to a website. Checking out the website might give me more information … if it’s a good website with a decent amount of content … fine, I’ll probably follow her.
Unfortunately, this is what you come to:
This is not a good thing …
- Lots of errors
- Only 3 pieces of content
- No real and apparent link to the supposed person behind “weightcoachlisa”
Conclusion: this is a fake spam account, and I’ll ignore the follow.
Note: I might be wrong. It might be a real account, and there might be a real person behind “weightcoachlisa.” And it might be the case that by not following her I’m missing out on some good tips.
But the backstory sucks. And therefore it’s not credible. And therefore the risk is higher than the reward.
Delete!
. . .
. . .
By the way, this is me on Twitter. Is my backstory credible?