“Look people in the eye digitally” and don not think having people follow you on social media constitutes a relationship, warned the world’s most social marketer today.

Ted Rubin, the chief social marketing officer for Collective Bias, admitted he gets frustrated when people view their social media followers and likes as an “audience” adding: “I look at it a different way, I think of everyone who follows me as an asset, I look at is like I would my home.

“I want to nurture them and make it better and improve it so I can sell it for more money.”

And while most people discount passive users of networks like Twitter Rubin told the ADMA Global Forum today “I love the lurkers” pointing out Twitter is the third biggest search engine in the world, and these people are “paying attention to me”.

Rubin is widely touted as the most followed CMO on Twitter, with 148,000 followers on the network.

In terms of “looking people in the eye digitally” he said there needs to be a movement back to traditional customer service, where you call people by name, and urged social media teams to look at their profile to learn something personal about them before responding.

He also urged other CMOs and CEOs to start interacting with their brand’s social media following themselves to get more hands on and understand their customers.