What It’s Like Marketing In The Nude

TweetYour business is exposed.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, personal blogs, business blogs, forums — you are out there.

If you haven’t taken your clothes off willingly, we did it for you.

We are talking about you and your tiny business on the web.

We are “sizing you up” — no pun intended — wait — there was a pun intended. 

Anyway — this has caused some interesting things to come to light:

We Like Being Naked More Than I Thought

I thought we were more bashful but apparently not — the success of check in sites like Foursquare sealed the deal for me — we are truly willing to hang it all out there.  Foursquare essentially tells your network where you are all the time.  Talk about putting it all out there!

The sharing, debating, discussion, and downright gluttony of openness going on out there — I have thought — would send the average business diving into the shower stall.

Nope.  Many stand unabashed in our birthday suits.

We Are More Forgiving Than I Thought

It’s become evident to me that we don’t want you or your business to be perfect — in fact if you seem perfect it may raise an alarm bell.

We want you to be “REAL.”

If you make mistakes — that’s ok — we all do.  If we think your products or services suck we are going to tell you.  And you need to take it like a man and try harder.

We don’t want to hear your faceless “COMPANY” talk, we want to hear a real person talk and then — we will forgive nearly anything.

We Are More Vicious Than I Thought

The dark side.

If you aren’t REAL — or sometimes if you are too real — you will get “thrashed” by the crowd — and it can be nasty.

There have been tons of examples of large brands taking it on the chin because of there poor handling of social media and a complete misunderstanding of how to market in the nude.

To these companies we say — I aint mad at you.  Just get real and we won’t be so vicious.  Fix your products, fix your customer service.

Give us more reasons to spread the good things about your company and less reasons to spread the bad.

What about you?  How have you handled this new form of marketing?   Are you careful about the message your tiny business sends?  What advice do you have for the rest of us?