Put the "social" in social media and social networking

admin | December 7, 2011

Put the “social” in social media and social networking

Social media is an entirely different tiger to tackle! Why? Not only are you trying to promote yourself, a business, or a niche, you HAVE TO be sociable. That’s the main reason of developing your own network of followers. Y’all genuinely are on the same page. Don’t just randomly post Facebook wall posts correlating to your business, or tweets, be useful! Spark some cool, interesting, and intriguing topics!

As I’ve said before, on Twitter it’s all about keeping up with what’s current. What can you possibly give in 140 characters that others people cannot? Retweeting is a very integral way of being part of the conversation, but don’t just post anything unless you do have a kind of niche that’s all over the place (which isn’t so good in the first place). Let’s say you run a blog on technology with a focus on a computers. Dell might have a new thing in the works, and there’s an article correlating to that specific topic. What you’ll do is retweet it out to your people that are genuinely interested in your niche, and as a result they’ll retweet. It spreads like a domino effect! This is a great way to build up your followers because people that see you retweeted them, know that you are rather supportive of their cause. Nine times out of ten if you have something that genuinely interests them, they’ll be more than happy to say follow this Twitter account or retweet what you have to say!

Engage in actual conversation! Yes, TALK to your users! The worst thing to do is simply be a guy that randomly tweets a few times a day and does not actually converse with his or her users. You might as well be a bot that retweets, retweets, and retweets until someone’s account collapses. Likewise, if you have a Facebook account, it’s not enough to just create a wall post. Engage in your topic, like other people’s topics, and share their posts as well. Providing this kind of mutual respect for one another’s post, and creating value are still important concepts that people do not grasp. Keep your stuff not only as a marketing tool, but make sure YOU are involved! When you become more sociable, you’ll give your stuff more meaning because it’s actually you out there responding, reposting people’s general interests. You’ll sure get a bigger rapport just from doing that!

There are excellent resources out there such as North Social and Hubspot that actually show you how to Launch a professional Facebook page with North Social apps.

. Also, you might want to check out Twitter for Business – Wondering how Twitter presence could be more effective? Download free ebook.