eCommerce: How Anti-Social People Might Suck At Blogging And Social Media

Card from funnygasm.com

I read this great article this morning called, “How To Build Relationships Through Blogging,” but what I took from the article was much different than what I think the author intended. You see, the article is mostly about the importance of being social, commenting, and making online friends to drive your own blog or marketing efforts. We all know that in order to be successful bloggers or to run successful marketing campaigns using social media we have to interact with other people. If you love other people, other people will love you back, it’s common sense. A few paragraphs in the author mentions people who hate socializing and think that “commenting” or interacting with others is stupid. This rang a bell for me and my mind went off on a sort of tangent about how you cannot teach some people how to make money online. Awkward people, weird people, or people with anxiety disorders, people who are not good in person are usually great at socializing online but people who genuinely hate interacting with others, who have nothing to say, or who want the world to be about them and them alone are not ideal candidates for blogging or social media marketing. If you’re not social at all, you’re probably going to suck at blogging and fail miserably. It’s not possible to build relationships without giving a little once in a while.

I’ve worked in eCommerce for seven years. Our company has teams of employees who only do social media marketing and there are always one or two who come in knowing nothing but are teachable and good at it and a couple who are only doing it for a paycheck and it really shows. Their dull, lifeless interactions are the antithesis of good marketing. If you’re not having fun, if you don’t like it, then it will show and it’s possible to hurt a business in the meantime. If your hearts not in it then blogging and social media just isn’t for you. Does that mean you’ll fail at eCommerce? No. But it DOES mean that you need to hire a social butterfly who will have a blast buddying up with the rest of the world online.