Nobody cares about your awesome company.

You know what they care about? Themselves. There, we said it.

So as a matter of fact, maybe people do care about your company, but only in terms of how your product or service relates to them. That’s why a successful inbound marketing campaign should focus on engaging with your target audience. As this article emphasizes, the thing to remember is that it’s not about you or your company. It’s all about the customer.

Consumers are bombarded with so many messages via so many avenues that it has become overwhelming. If you’re not engaging with and listening to your audience, they can easily ignore you. In fact, according to this Huff Post article, people are even overwhelmed by all the personal information shared by their “friends” on social networks. People are sick of hearing so much about each other, the author claims, and this helps to explain the explosive popularity of Pinterest.

While at first glance Pinterest might seem to be about the individual posting items on their personalized pinboards, it’s truly more about the items themselves than the person who pinned them. As the author points out, Facebook and Twitter are mostly about telling people who we are–or rather, a carefully edited version of ourselves:

In short, too many of our posts come with the silent subtext “Here’s how great I am.” On Pinterest, the tone seems to be “Wouldn’t this be great?”

Pinterest users want to find cool, useful stuff and share that stuff with their friends. They want to interact with other people who have similar interests. Sure, the whole concept is quite materialistic and consumerist, but people are connecting with each other in ways that haven’t happened on other social networks.

As a business owner, you can use this to your advantage, but only if you constantly remind yourself It’s about the customer. People buy things for their own reasons, and they like it when you listen to them, engage with them, and offer them something of value that they care about.

So, sure, you can use your boards to display your own products and promote yourself, but that should be only a small piece of the total picture. The goal is to incorporate your own stuff into a much larger collection of items that interests your target audience. What do they want and need and care about? Think sharing and collaborating. Think “repinning.”

Effectively using inbound marketing channels like Pinterest requires putting yourself in the shoes of that person you want for a customer. It means taking a step back from your business and forgetting how awesome it is. That’s not an easy thing to do, because after all, it’s not true that nobody cares about your business. You care. You care a lot. Your business probably takes up most of your time, energy and brain capacity. But if you can remember that it’s really about the customer, your awesome company will have a much better chance of success.

We can help you develop an inbound marketing strategy that will let you better engage with your audience. Contact us to learn more.