Facebook has a massive user base of many different people from many different cultures and walks of life. People go on Facebook and other social networking sites to be able to unplug, see what there friends are doing, check out the latest news from around the world and to feel a little more connected to society.

Because there's so much attention on Facebook and so many people are on it businesses and marketers see it as an opportunity to sell products and services. If there's that many people in Facebook it must be pretty easy to sell on the platform right?

Turns out people don't want to be sold on social media. They want to get away from the selling, click bait marketing and other common tactics employed by marketers. Think about it; when your scrolling through Facebook and you happen across a blatant ad you scroll right past it. You don't have the time or patience to listen to another blah blah blah sales or landing page about features and benefits of a supposed wonder product.

So what makes you stop and click, share, comment or like something on a social network? For most people it has to be something that sparks emotion; it's a funny video or picture, meme, article that you find interesting or an educational piece that gives you some valuable info that you can use. Once you see enough of this stuff from a page on Facebook you start checking it regularly, like the page and begin to trust them as a resource for content you enjoy.

This is how we build a relationship with people and show them that we care more about them than sales by providing a tremendous amount of value at no cost. Now that we understand how people want to interact on social media and how they consume content on it. Why are traditional marketers still relying on short term tactics for selling with click bait Facebook ads, sending people to a landing page with a countdown timer (that never really hits zero), promising certain features and benefits and then sending a series of spammy emails encouraging people to hurry and buy now?

It's because they don't understand the changing landscape of marketing and haven't taken the time to learn how people want to be interacted with on social media. Plus it's much more difficult to produce content that actually helps people for free and the results take longer to show up in the form of new customers. But when they do you form a powerful relationship with your customers, because you already given them so much. Your brand will become so engrained with them that they will go out of their way to purchase the products and services.

When looking at the ideal strategy to build your brand and get people to purchase your products and services it's all about building that trust and developing a relationship with your customers. You do this by focusing on what they want and how they want it and this is through producing incredibly valuable information through blogs, videos, funny pictures and videos and interacting with them and talking back and forth when they have questions. It all comes down to LISTENING to your customers and reverse engineering your strategy to address their wants and needs!