Your business is dumb but I like you as a person

The Internet has created a very unique, fast, and easy way for businesses to connect with their customers. In many ways, this is very good. But in some ways, this is also annoying and bad. The blog post focuses on the bad.

I don’t want to be treated like a customer until I decide to be a customer. For example, when I order food from McDonald’s, I don’t want the cashier to make chit-chat with me, ask me about my day or anything. I want to be treated like a customer: ask me what I want, tell me how much it costs, then give me what I ordered. McDonald’s doesn’t have to try to advertise the burger when I’m in the restaurant; I didn’t go there to browse.

When I’m not in McDonald’s, it would be extremely annoying to have McDonald’s employees giving me their cards and asking me about my fast food preferences and what I think of McDonald’s. This might seem absurd because the fast food industry tends not to do that.

But with the Internet, some businesses and artists promote themselves very much in this way. They get on Twitter and auto-follow people who mention “social media”, they search for blog posts on certain topics, and they encourage people to become their fans on Facebook.

SHUT UP ALREADY!

If I’m looking for a business or an artist, I’ll go out myself and find what I need! I don’t need or want to be found! (At least not through “personal connecting” … if you find me through a Google ad or a banner ad, that’s OK.)

And if you connect with me as a person, by either commenting on my blog or messaging me on Twitter, of course I’ll probably be nice. Being nice to other humans is a good and decent thing to do. But that doesn’t mean I think all business ideas are wise or my business preferences can be changed or influenced with simply a personal connection. Are books on marketing telling people otherwise?

If I rant about not liking a company, being contacted by someone in the company isn’t going to help much (unless trying to contact the company was what I was ranting about). The business’s goal should be to not cause those rants, not deal with them when they find them. Of course I’ll be nice and polite to another person, but a business is not a person. I can loathe a business but be kind to its employees.

So, to anybody out there who’s in or interested in marketing and branding: stop putting so much interest in making pseudo-personal connections. They’re “pseudo” because if you’re not truly interested in me as a person and are just connecting with me as a form of advertising, then it’s not really a true personal connection. If you want to make a real personal connection, you better not be doing it for your business.

That’s all, thanks for reading this post! I just want to mention one more thing, because I can tell you’re a reader with good taste: I’m a music composer, and I’m available for hire for all your music needs…