Are You Trying too Hard, Or Not Hard Enough

Last week while I was in Denver teaching about social media and viral marketing, I was trying to come up with a good analogy to explain the problem many business owners face when trying to enter this realm. As usual, a perfect example managed to fall right into my lap. The problem really is more basic than you'd think. It boils down to trying too hard, or not trying hard enough.

The night before the seminar started, I had two instances that perfectly demonstrated companies making these mistakes.

I was traveling with Emmitt (my 9 month old) and Greg (my husband) and we'd all finally managed to get to sleep in our hotel around 10pm. At 12:30am, Emmitt woke up. After I got him settled back to sleep I noticed a strange buzzing sound. It sort of sounded like when a florescent bulb goes out. I tried to go back to sleep, but it kept buzzing and buzzing. I got up and went to see if I could find the sound and I noticed it was coming from the door.

I got to the door and it sounded like it might be on the other side of the door. We were staying at a Hampton Inn that had one of those atriums in the middle and it sounded like the hotel might be doing some work outside. That seemed odd, considering the hour, so, I opened the door.

I stepped out into the hall and looked down into the lobby.

Imagine my surprise when I saw firemen running into the building.

Now imagine my further surprise when the hotel manager looked up from the desk, spotted me and started frantically gesturing while trying to yell "you have to get out of the building" above the din of what I now realized was a fire alarm.

I rushed back in the room to wake up Greg, throw on jeans and snag Emmitt. We headed down the hall to the staircase and made our way outside to join the throngs of hotel guests in the parking lot.

Just as I was thinking to myself "Geeze...what would have happened if Emmitt hadn't woken me up" I started hearing murmurs in the crowd. Apparently, everyone else that was outside was either awake when the alarm went off, or was woken up by friends they were traveling with.

Then I looked up and noticed how many guests were now looking out of their windows at those of us standing outside.

In other words, the hotel not only had a fire alarm that sounded like an annoying buzz rather than an attention grabbing squeal...they also hadn't bothered to try and let people know that they needed to evacuate. There was no calling the rooms, no knocking on doors, no nothing. It was pretty much "every guest for themselves."

Now perhaps the hotel knew that it was a false alarm, but I can't say it made me feel much better to think that. From the sounds of things, the other guests weren't very happy about things either.

It almost immediately made me think of the social media talk I'd be giving the next day. Perhaps the hotel was worried we'd be mad because they'd woken us up. Perhaps they were too busy with their own problems. Perhaps they simply didn't care one way or the other. To those of us staying in the hotel, the message was clear; we didn't matter.

That's a mistake a lot of companies make when it comes to social media. You may be afraid that you'll make someone mad, you may be too busy focusing on other areas of your business, you may not have even given social media a second though. Unfortunately, if you aren't doing anything to build relationships with your customers, they may think that you don't think they matter.

Of course that only covered one half of my analogy. Little did I know that a few hours later, the other half would fall into place.

At four in the morning, just a couple hours after we all got settled back into the room, the phone rang. It was the courier service from American Airlines. The airline had lost Emmitt's car seat on our flight in and had lent us one of theirs. They promised to get Emmitt's car seat back to us "as soon as possible."

Well, in my mind, "as soon as possible" can generally mean "sometime after the sun comes up."

Nonetheless, the courier was in the hotel lobby, calling our room at four in the morning asking if Greg would please come down and swap car seats with him. So, Greg got up, got dressed (again) and headed downstairs (again) to get the car seat out of our rental car.

The mistake here? Trying too hard.

Now I imagine I would have been very happy to hear from the courier at four in the morning if he was bringing the clothes I would be wearing for the seminar the next day. However, since I don't generally drive around with a baby in the car at four am, it sort of seemed like they could wait a bit longer to drop things off. I appreciated the ASAP delivery attempt, but by trying so hard to make me happy, they actually left me feeling pretty exasperated.

Voila! I had my second analogy. One of the hardest things about social media marketing for many businesses is not seeming too eager. Yes, it's wonderful that companies want to open up the lines of communication with their customers, but there's a difference between being open and being obnoxious.

Two companies making two mistakes, both of which caused me to get a lot less sleep that night. One trying too hard, one not trying hard enough. Where are you when it comes to social media?