Lucky you; you’re not perfect.

Good thing people cherish imperfections in social media.

It’s not going to cut it to try to be perfect and untouchable on social media, anyway, so don’t waste too much time trying. That doesn’t mean you can slack off and not deliver your best to your customers. It just means that your customers’ bullcrap detectors are up and they’re actually pretty accurate. They just want a little human interaction.

What folks are looking for from your business is a people connection. A face or name to go with your service or product. Real live service and response.

Let me tell you a little story about a salad dressing company out of Beaumont, TX. I taste tested some dressing the other day at HEB (the local store) and liked it. As I was putting the bottle of Italian in my cart, the gentleman at the table told me to look up the potato recipe on their website. I would love it, he told me.

So as I was preparing dinner last night, I went to the website to pull the recipe and couldn’t find it. I had already bought some new white potatoes in hopes of making a recipe with my new bottle of salad dressing, so I went ahead and guessed. My potatoes turned out great, but I still wondered what I was missing, so I emailed the company and asked where I might find that potato recipe.

Within 12 hours I got an email back from Seth, with an apology, a link to the page on the website with the recipe, and a thank you for my support.

The little mistake/misunderstanding did not turn me away from the salad dressing company; it actually made me feel a closer connection to them. Think of the multiple personal touches I’ve had with Leo’s Originals:

• The meeting/taste test in the store (local product love)
• Perusing the website in search of a specific recipe (seeing tons of other recipes I wanted to try)
• The personal email, connected with a name of someone inside the company
• My return to the website via a link to a specific page

Now if Seth hadn’t responded to my email inquiry, I still would have enjoyed the salad dressing, but I wouldn’t be writing this blog post, for sure!

Through a policy (I can only assume) of being responsive to online activity (by email and my visit to their website) they have made a deeper connection and ensured my future purchases of their product — not to mention this public hat-tip.

See, there’s no need to be perfect; no requirement to be “big.” Small and personal wins in social media and email marketing.