When Does Marketing Become Unattractive Self-Promotion?

There's a guy I see on Facebook who is on my "friends" list. Actually, he's a friend of a friend of a friend, and that's how he got on my list. He's constantly posting self-promotional posts about upcoming events he's holding or posts that pitch his services. It's ok. It's unfortunate that he's just pitching, pitching, pitching and never sharing anything about who he really is (because he would get so much more business out of Facebook if he would), but that's his business.

Then he jumped on the bandwagon of this new Facebook fad - creating a fan page for yourself, signing up as your first fan, and then trying to get others to sign up as your fan. I guess he thinks it will be more prestigeous to have a bunch for fans than to have a bunch of friends. Maybe it is. Who knows?

The problem is that his annoying approach of constantly marketing himself in that medium (Facebook) crossed the line to a really unattractive form of self-promotion. Creating a fan page for yourself and then signing up as your first fan - really? You think that's a good marketing approach?

Really good marketing is about establishing relationships. You establish a relationship between yourself and prospective customers or clients. It's not about becoming a celebrity. It's about developing trust.

It's true that name recognition is really good. And it's also true that celebrities can sell a lot of stuff. But there has to be some substance behind it. I don't care what the world of reality TV and overnight celebrity says. Real and sustainable success in business is not about over-the-top self promotion. It's about offering something of value and developing positive and long term relationships with those who can benefit from what you offer.

The number of people who sign up on the fan page you created for yourself really has nothing to do with it.