What could you do with thousands of customers eagerly waiting to hear about your latest product or service? That is what you have when you build a loyal following in social media. The next goal of social media is spreading. At first glance this may look similar to energizing and it is. With energizing you are encouraging your customers to evangelize for you with spreading you are developing the message and sending it out. This is the closest to traditional advertising’s push mentality as social media gets.

As much as we evangelize engagement with your customers there are times where you just want to send out a single message to the customers. If you have a loyal following they may pick up your message and spread it. For many marketers this is the most comfortable form of communicating with customers. This may make them think it is also the easiest and most effective.

That is where the problems start. Users are flooded with information on social media sites everyday if they are following you they expect you to add value to the stream. If all your company does is broadcast press releases you will lose your followers quicker than you can attract new ones. So you must provide content your followers find helpful and worth sharing. This is when if you’re lucky your message goes “viral”. But be careful a viral message by definition is spreading without your control. How people receive and interpret your message is important. Building on a core association the public has with your brand is important to convert a click to a sale. The spreading goal should be used sparingly and in conjunction with other social media goals to be most effective.

Maple Seed Marketing can help you determine when to push the message on your customers and when to allow them to pull the message from you.