I hope you agree, social media marketing should be about being non-exclusive.

Regarding that sentiment, I was in line this morning at Starbucks and experienced something of a cultural moment that illustrates a valuable point.

The guy in front of me stepped up to take his turn and, apologetically and in a soft voice, he began to ask…”What is a soy latte? What’s a triple-espresso? What is…?” His body language and tone of voice revealed that he was almost ashamed that he did not know these things and had finally decided to conquer his “ignorance” and humbly brave the cold, snooty winds of Starbucks and ask. There were two other friendly folks in line who glanced at each other and, as if on que, exchanged a eye-roll and a smirk. This really fascinated me.

We all like to be the one who is included or “in the know” and, yet, human nature is to exclude or, at the very least, bristle when a new soul knocks on the door of our precious club.

Social media is all about the idea of clubs. Therefore, social media marketing tests your ability to fit in. So, if you want to “use” social media to get your marketing message across you need to acknowledge human nature and be prepared to leverage it.

As you enter a new social media arena, whether it be a Web 2.0 site, a new forum, a membership group, etc, be ready to hike the learning curve and deal with some exclusionary snobbery. Don’t let this stop you! Get your questions answered, be genuine but don’t be deterred.

At the same time, respect the accepted status quo of the given social media arena. Each has it’s own “menu” and lingo. At some point, you need to conform your behavior and content so it fits into the collective personality of each social media arena.

This takes some time, but not as long as you may think. Here’s how to accelerate the learning curve:

• Find the 10 most popular profiles and see what kind of content they submit, vote on and comment on. Note their titles and descriptions in particular.
• Watch the “front page” of the given social media site each day for a week or two and mentally categorize the type of content that makes it to the top.
• Look at the bottom of the barrel for the content that was chucked and determine what this “club” does not want to see. Most of it will look like obvious spam but you will see content that, because of the topic, was trashed.

Once this is done, you will be somewhat of an expert yourself and will be able to hit the ground running with your social media marketing endeavors.

You’ll have the skills necessary to satisfy the social elitists and Starbucks snobs of the world and, thus, no one will be forced to roll their eyes and smirk.

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