blur Marketing is part of a social marketing ecosystem in excess of over 40,000 people. So I’ll confess up front that we don’t have one-to-one relationships with all of them. But in this social era, we all strive to make our comments as engaging as possible, so that we do engage with as many people as possible.

But it seems that putting your business and your business persona on social doesn’t always  mean you want to be that social. We saw this recently on our own Twitter feeds, but before I go into detail and to illustrate what I mean – here’s a quick quiz for you to answer. I make no claim for the transparent grouping of the potential responses!

1) When you get a new follower on Twitter do you:

a) Follow back – they’re interested in you, so why wouldn’t you be interested in them

b) Follow back as long as they’re clearly not an egg avatar spammer

c) Check out their full profile, their list of followers, their other websites and social profiles and then decide you probably don’t want to follow them really.

2) If you receive an @message on Twitter from someone who doesn’t follow you do you

a) Reply back – it’s all about making conversation

b) Reply back if they’ve asked a question but otherwise be a bit cautious – those links look a bit suspect

c) Ignore them – what business is it of theirs what you think

3) If you get invited on Linkedin to make a connection from someone who just shares a group with you, do you

a) Snap at the chance – after all everyone knows people rate you on your number of connections

b) Reply that you’d like to know why you should connect as you haven’t really done business with them, but realise you do have shared group interests in common

c) Ignore and report them for spam

It’s fairly obvious that answering a) to all shows that you just like the numbers but that’s often the startpoint for actually developing some strong social connections; b) shows a more considered approach – yes you want connections but you’re a little bit unsure of mixing unknowns with your IRL contacts and c) answers suggest that you really only want your social networks to mirror your real life versions.

The degrees of caution may be appropriate for your personal contacts, but when you are looking at them from your business networking, is your sensible approach limiting your opportunities?

As a business, we’re always pushing the boundaries of social marketing. We acknowledge that sometimes these efforts can be experimental: where we want to find out about an outcome rather than expecting one. But we’ve used it successfully to recruit creatives to the Crowds on our Exchange, to find businesses willing to brief on the Exchange and to make our profile more public than traditional channels would ever achieve.

Recently we approached some twitter folk who were on a public list with credentials which matched an interesting brief on our exchange to see if they’d like to join the Exchange – with all its benefits to smart creatives, and if they’d be interested in pitching. The sort of approach that in traditional days would have been done by a phone call and request to register an interest.

The results were surprising. Some people asked if this was legitimate. I’m afraid we weren’t able to provide links to dubious pictorial sites, or money-making scams. Others questioned whether a direct approach like this could possibly pay dividends. And then some were delighted to be followed and asked.

Now bear in mind these were all people whose business is marketing. And they’ve all put themselves out there on social. Yet if they are subject to a direct approach then they respond very differently. If we compare with the old world – some will be sending the RPC back as soon as the mailer has hit the desk, whereas some will be putting it in the bin unopened. OK not a scientifically significant sample size, but interesting and rather surprising.

This week Twitter announced that it will be possible for people to DM verified business twitter accounts without ‘mutual following’. Although it’s created a bit of a stir the implications are a real step forward in social marketing. It’s simply saying that putting yourself out there means that you are inviting and encouraging interaction.

That’s the way it should be in social. If you really mean what you say about encouraging engagement, then you shouldn’t be discouraging it when it happens. This is your path to proper customer interaction, to having the instant response capabilities and to not just say ‘Listen to me’ but ‘Talk to me’.

When you set up your personal and business profiles, think about what this does mean. Social media is not a one-way activity. It’s not the controlled call-to-action that we used to have in our above-the-line activity, where one response only was possible. Let’s make social marketing work the way it should do. If you need help with your social campaigns why not submit a brief?