Courtesy of Mike Licht

Social media, brand democratization, and the lowering of entry costs to online marketing have given so many of us great opportunities to market ourselves, but now and then, I see a wave of new people pop up.

These are the bells-and-whistles, look-at-me, I’m-trying-just-a-little-too-hard crowd.

Any good salesperson knows that you have to state the benefits of your product, find the pain points of potential clients, and ask for the sale, but when I go on Twitter and see companies (and individuals) posting things like, “We only work with the best clients,” “We’re super selective,” etc, etc, etc, all that I’m really seeing is a poor attempt at stating the benefits.

Read: “We only work with the best clients” is not a benefit.

Inevitably, these are the some of the same folks that Ian Lurie refers to in My Twitter Followers are Bigger than Yours.

The size of your Twitter following, the volume of your megaphone, and the supposed enthusiasm of your outbound messages mean almost nothing to people that see those things. What people really care about is a proven track record and a strong belief that you are actually what you say you are. They want to know that, if they give you their money, you’re going to do what you promised with it. If they agree to your “buy you a coffee and pick your brain,” they want to know you’re not going to waste their time. You’re an expert, or at least, that’s what your self-promoting blog kept saying.

The same is true whether you’re a nonprofit, small business, or personal brand.

In Valeria Maltoni’s recent post about comment strategies, she talked about how people often overlook that an integral part of cultivating your reputation online is going to others’ blogs, commenting, and thereby adding value to something other than your own product or online properties. When you start up your blog, Twitter account, Facebook fan page, and whatever else, you often don’t realize that that is only a small part of what you need to do online.

You can’t just broadcast and hope that people will listen.

You can’t just have a follow, follow-back policy on Twitter. You need to build relationships. You need to go where the people care most to be and let them know you’re there. You need to let them know that you care. And, you need to let them know that you’re listening. You can do that on Twitter, but broadcasting won’t work. Conversing with people might.

Do you see people trying too hard online? Do you get tired of the self-aggrandizing, look-how-great-I-am broadcast tweets, status updates, and posts? What do you do about that? Ignore it? Chastise them? Something else?

Tags: bells and whistles, Ian Lurie, megaphone, online marketing, trying too hard, Valeria Maltoni