What does a film about the supernatural and marketing have in common? It’s nothing to do the occult, so don’t worry. If you can remember the scenes when they used the proton packs, the rule was simple. Don’t cross the streams!

 

In marketing there are 3 rough categories of activity that we could call streams.

 

1 Advertising. Telling an audience about you and your product in your words…

 

2 Public relations. Someone else telling an audience about you and your product in their words.

 

3 Social media. Chatting with people with as little mention of you or your product as possible.

 

When we mix the messages up, mistakes get made. If you use communities like Twitter or Facebook, then the golden rule is to keep it chatty and not overly push your business. Advertising loses you potential customers if you make high claims and false promises. Customers have very fine tuned BS detectors and they can spot a vaguely veiled pitch a mile off.