CC Chapman had a great post on Managing the Gray today about personalization in self-promotion, and it got me thinking about something that got me kind of annoyed last night.
Some setup: Maureen and I have been on Myspace since we started The Wicked Good Podcast. We thought we’d use it to promote the show, and that hasn’t really happened as much as we thought it would (though we have found some great local bands to play on the show as a result), mainly because I don’t have the patience to reformat our show notes into MySpace’s craptastic interface. We added a number of people at first, but since then, we’re more or less let people come to us, and as long as said request isn’t from someone trying to get us to sign up for free iPods or adult services, we’ll happily accept any request.
What I’ve noticed lately, though, is the proliferation of event invitations on MySpace. These differ from bulletins in that they generate an e-mail to all the invitees. This is fine when used properly, but they’re often used to spam everyone’s friend list with some sort of announcement. In particular, what sent me over the edge was some podcaster who apparently added me to their friend list a while back sent out an event invitation to, I presume, his entire friend list to announce that he had posted episode #10 of his or her podcast. Said podcaster is no longer on my friend list.
Now, this could be the best podcast ever created, but I’m already sour on it, and the event invitation had the exact opposite effect of what this podcaster intended. Now, if this person had taken the time to send me a personal message (preferably indicating that they’d at least heard of my show), I’d probably give his show a listen, even if it’s not my thing. I’ll go way out of my way for my listeners. But I get so much spam lately that all I’m looking for is ways to reduce it, so anyone who’s bombing me with unsolicited e-mail on MySpace is going to be taken off my friend list as a defensive measure, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this line of thinking.
I think all the social networking opportunities that are available on the internet now are creating a Pokemon-esque “gotta catch ‘em all” mentality, and a lot of folks are so consumed with building said networks that they don’t give much thought to how to use them effectively. It’s really easy to send out a mass message to everyone in your network and hope that it sticks with a couple of people. But keep in mind that you’re not the only one who’s building these gigantic, loosely-associated networks (especially on MySpace, where “friend” is used in only the loosest of senses; I probably couldn’t tell you who half of my MySpace friends are without looking at their profiles), and that you’ll probably alienate twice as many people as you bring in. You’re much better off using these social networking sites to create personal connections with people and bring them in that way. It doesn’t have the instant gratification of a blast, but it’ll pay off better in the long run.
Social networking can be really powerful mojo, and as a wise man once said: With great power comes great responsibility.
