A lot of people ask me why I’m so successful with connecting with my tribe via social media. It’s a great question, because it lets us explore how useful social media can be — and how to apply it without broadcasting endless pitches to people, but actually engage them and provide true value.
Be Findable
The particular platforms changes for different businesses. Someone in the corporate arena needs to be on LinkedIn while a band espresso captions. would be a better candidate for a page on Myspace. The qualifying measure for deciding which social media platforms you need to be on is straightforward: where are them and prospects lurking today?
Have an Attitude, Years old
If you’re a business that sells accounting programs for accountants, you probably have a certain feel on your website and other marketing materials. If you sell exotic automobiles or couture fashion, your feel would be quite different. Whatever that feel is, it should bleed through which all your social media accounts.
I can’t count how many times someone has messaged me or shared one of my posts, and when I click through which their page to see if i should be following back, I find… nothing. No picture, no biography, not even the city they live in. If you’re in the experience protection program, you probably really should not be on social media in the first place. But if you are hoping to use social media to build your brand, expand your reach, or actually make money, give us something to go on.
You can start with a pic! If we go to your Twitter page and there’s just a colored egg cell where your face should be, it’s like a billboard that says, “Hi, I’m Amish, and I’m checking to see if this computer fad is going to last. inch Even 97-year-old mammies are contacting pix of their great-grandkids. If you don’t know how to distribute a photograph, ask someone.
Make it a real photo of you, not your pet or llama. And please, post a current one. (Don’t be one of those people who sends a pic and shows up 15 years later! ) We want to know who we’re speaking to. Likewise with caricatures or icons. Use them as long as they really are an essential part of your branding.
And by the way, for many of you scanning this, your avatar should be your logo. But don’t just do it mindlessly. Think about who is actually doing the feed and whether a personal photo would be better instead. You can place the logo someplace else on the page.
Most important, the feel and feel of your brand should come through most robust in the actual nourishes you post. Your feed should be congruent with who you are. If you follow Joel Osteen, you expect inspirational twitting; if you’re reading Bill Simmons, you expect occasional doses of snark. Make sure your social media posts are in line with the messaging (and feel) you send through all of your other channels.
Engage, Don’t Broadcast
There is a reason it is called social media not broadcast media. So stop broadcasting at people and start talking with them. Nobody wants to follow a feed for any business that is outright pitches. But if you make your feed valuable and relevant, people don’t mind you making an occasional offer for your products. Even so, it’s always preferable to present these in the context of the problems they solve for your followers, not the features of what you’re selling.