The Marketer Who Hates the Social Media Hustle

Comments 12 December 2008

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Today I was reminded that much of what we do on social media is hustle. On our blogs, we hustle our readers. On our social networks, we hustle our Friends. Sometimes, when we are really desperate, we even resort to emails or text messages to hustle our real friends. We hustle them to read our posts, listen to our podcasts, watch our videos, join our groups, subscribe to our RSS feeds, retweet our tweets, link to our websites, promote our causes, sign our petitions, vote on our contest entries, buy our books, and donate to our favorite charities.

For instance, today, in three successive posts, I hustled friends, readers and strangers to join the Voices Against Terror Facebook cause, vote for MobiChange at the NetSquared USAID Development 2.0 Challenge, and buy my collaborative book ‘The Age of Conversation 2.0: Why Don’t People Get It?’. Then, I followed up my blog posts with even more hustling on Twitter and Facebook, and, eventually, on email and in person.

The thing is: I hate to hustle and social media is all about the hustle.

Don’t get me wrong. I love social media. I love how social media has allowed me to be an extrovert from the safety of my computer screen. I love how social media has enabled me to convert my curiosity about the internet into the possibility of a rewarding career. I love how it has helped me connect with tons of interesting people and transformed both my personal and professional relationships. Without social media, I would be the typical IIM MBA stuck in the typical 9 to 7 corporate career and I’m grateful to social media for allowing me to step off that work-watch-spend treadmill.

But social media is all about the hustle, it’s all about working the room, and, indeed, working your social networks, doing anything you need to do to increase your influence, build your brand, do your version of good.

In fact, some of the most visible faces in social media — Gary Vaynerchuk, Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Brogan and Beth Canter — are master hustlers even though each one of them has a signature hustle style. I have great respect and envy for all these people, both for the skill and ease with which they use social media hustle and for how they do it to help their communities.

But hustling is hard work and I have never really learned how to work the room. I prefer to stand in a quiet corner with a glass of wine, and share a story with a friend or two, and look out at the rest of the room with a amused half-smile. When I do have to work a room, I do it with passable skill and great reluctance, and the end result is always extreme exhaustion.

It’s not surprising, then, that I feel so tired after all my hustling today.

(Update: Here’s a useful handbook by Tamar Weinberg on how to avoid the social media hustle.)

Author

Gaurav Mishra

Gaurav Mishra - who has written 746 posts on Gauravonomics Blog on Social Media and Social Change.

As CEO of 2020 Social, I build and nurture online communities for Indian and international clients, connect their customers, partners and employees, and help them achieve their business objectives. Ask us how we can help you.

Contact the author

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dina mehta

Gaurav, I hate hustling too. I don't buy that Social Media is all about hustling. That's doing injustice to users of social media and your readers by implying they can and will be 'hustled'!!!

We all hustle once in a while. If the 'hustling' leads to meaningful dialogue/conversation/action that is visible to those who are recipients of your "hustle" then it makes sense. If it's only about how great I am, and how great I am perceived by my community and the rest of the world, it just won't work.

A lot of the people you mention use their social media 'whuffie' for causes outside themselves - is that hustling?

Building your influence and brand really comes from the relationships you are able to build with a wide audience based on solid and credible work, thought, intent, experience, energy, imagination. Not just hustling :)

vinod

In a very very crude form of saying yes u r right, but its the end that justifies the means.

Gaurav Mishra

@DIna: Of course you are right. I have great respect and envy for all these people, both for the skill and ease with which they use social media and for how they do it to help their communities. I didn't really mean to say that hustling itself is bad, just that I hate doing it. As I said, it has been a long and tiring day. :-)

manuscrypts

I abso agree with dina..i believe in the self correcting mechanism that the medium offers... it rests on the intent of the 'hustling'... its a choice for the 'hustler', with its own set of pros and cons.. yes, the names you have mentioned do hustle, but i still read them because their content gives me food for thought... its a choice for the reader also..like any product, the smart customer chooses to be hustled by certain communication, because he knows its a good deal.. in the end its a trust thing, the moment i realise that the author is all about himself and has stopped adding value to my life, i switch off... in this case, pride comes before a #FAIL ;)

Vivek Khandelwal

Hey..
Nice post.
At times even when as a social media evangelist , when you don't intend to hustle your readers , too much of redundant stuff sends the wrong message.But then there are times when Hustle actually leads to real time, very genuine conversations , which everybody enjoys.
Its not really bout the hustle as u say..its more bout the art, or infact the timing of the hustle.
If one does it at time when everybody is doing it, oyu might be blamed for overdoing it ..

Ankesh Kothari

Thanks Gaurav. Not trying to change your opinions, but trying to lay down a different outlook of how to use social media without hustling:

1. First rule of networking: you need to have something of value to give to people. If you can help people, your networking - either online or offline - won't feel like hustling. Mother Teresa - Princess Diana - you wouldn't call them hustlers, would you? But thats what they did. Hustled with love.

2. "Build small community and thousands will want to join." - Confucius. You could use social media to build small but intensely loyal communities too. You don't really need 23,000 followers like Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuck. As Kevin Kelly says - a 1000 true fans is enough to spread your message far and wide. (Google "1000 true fans" - its an interesting read.)

3. Focus on a 1000 true fans. And focus on making the ideas you talk about sticky and viral. And you're set. No working the room necessary. No hustling needed. (Good book to read = "Made to stick".)

For every Anthony Robbins or Dan Kennedy - there is a Roy H. Williams or a Sean D'Souza. For every @chrisbrogan - there is a @havi - (check her out.) Yes - there are other approaches out there that wont make you feel like a consummate hustler!

Gaurav Mishra

@Vivek:
At times even when you don’t intend to hustle your readers , too much of redundant stuff sends the wrong message.

You are right. I sometimes forget that a few hundred people read every word I write and start treating my blog as an online diary or a scrapbook and, sometimes, almost as a memory aid. That happened with all the posts about my citizen journalism interviews in the last two weeks. The lesson I have learnt is to remember how it looks from outside in.

But, I wasn't talking about that here, I was talking about situations when I know I'm hustling, when I'm almost expected to hustle, like the three situations I wrote about.

@Dina/ @Manuscrypt: I agree with your point about the difference between hustling to promote yourself promote something bigger than yourself. My point was that hustling is tiring irrespective of what your are hustling for. In my case, I was hustling for a cause against terrorism, a social mobile venture and a book whose proceeds go to charity.

@Ankesh: My own approach to community building is really quite similar: first, focus on building something worthwhile, then the community will follow. Both "1000 True Fans" and "Made to Stick" are great reads and I go back to them often. And thanks for pointing out @havi: I'm following her now.

naperville mom

interesting...me too in the category of 'hustling haters' but y'know, in an odd sort of way, without hustling, there'd be no marketing, no viewership, no takers for ideas/ ideologies/ products...marketing is 'hustling' to put it in raw words, I'd assume...

Gaurav Mishra

@Naperville Mom: The realization that hustling is inevitable in marketing is part of the reason why I'm tired of hustling... and marketing in general.