Social Media is all about the “social” aspect of marketing. It doesn’t matter if you are doing your social media purely for fun or as part of a business strategy.
If you are on any social media platform you are marketing a product, even if that product is yourself.
There is a reason we constantly check our pictures to see how many people liked our images. I post and share images, articles and status updates with the hope that my content is interesting to my followers.
I am marketing both myself and my business with every social interaction.
I love social media. I love sharing photos, being social and curating interesting content from my feed to share.
I like engaging people, sharing ideas, collaborating on projects and in general making new friends from around the world.
Social media makes our world just a little bit smaller each day.
Why social media engagement matters:
I’m not an expert at social media, but over the last year of blogging, I’ve noticed a few things that I’d like to share.
Anyone using social media for business wants to increase their following base. It is all about the almighty follower, likes, comments, shares . . . . the list goes on and on.
We use our social media platform to share material.
Simple right.
It sounds like it should be.
There is a myth, that as long as you put up quality content your readers will come. I’m getting visions of “Field of Dreams” – and yes this does date me.
Yeah, not so much. Oh, you’ll get lucky occasionally and pick up a few new followers and have someone share your content, but it takes more than just quality content to attract people.
Engagement, engagement, engagement!
It is kind of like the old standby in real estate of, location, location, location.
You can have the most beautiful feed in twitter land and you won’t get followers unless you are engaging people.
Over the last year, I’ve slowly been increasing my twitter following. I had gotten my count to around 1300 just prior to having my baby 3 month ago. 1300 isn’t a huge number, but my base was solid. I was receiving a decent number of shares and had great interaction.
I completely abandoned twitter for 2 ½ month after giving birth.
I kept my auto-tweeting going through Tweetjuke box, but literally did nothing else for 10 weeks.
When I got back on Twitter, my following had dropped to around 1200 and I had lost a lot of traction. The only people retweeting my content were friends who knew I was out on maternity leave.
It was really disheartening to see how much ground I had lost.
Five weeks later, I’ve increased my following to 1,815.
I attribute my loss and subsequent gain entirely to engagement.
I’m still posting the same auto content, but am now supplementing it with additional content. I’m retweeting, sharing interesting articles I’ve read, but most importantly I’m commenting and interacting again.
No one wants to follow a robot on Twitter.
When I’m following people, I want to know that there is someone behind the screen.
I want authenticity.
In other words, successful social media enthusiasts are social animals who use their love of engagement to increase their following.
I’ve seen it over and over in social media land. The friendliest users end up with the most followers. There are certain people who just have an inherent need to be helpful.
In the process of being helpful they have literally building their brands by sharing their knowledge base.
I’ve touched specifically on twitter interactions, but believe this same attitude is universal through all social media sites.
The most successful people on social media are those with the “niceness” factor. They have turned a desire to provide useful, applicable information into a successful brand.
I’ve read hundreds of posts on how to be successful on social media from some of the top marketers in the world. Without fail every single article will mention some form of personal engagement.
Yes, there is a place for automation in social media, but don’t forget that ultimately your success is tied to meaningful engagement.
So what are you going to do differently to engage your followers?
Amy White has over 16 years of experience in business operational management. With the birth of her daughter, Amy recently resigned as the HR Director for a medical management company, which had grown from 20 employees to over 100 during her tenure. This experience has given her a unique insight into marketing which lead to the development of her blog www.digitalmedia.education. Digital Media Education began as an offshoot of her personal finance blog www.dailysuccessfulliving.com and was intended to highlight the learning process she experienced while blogging. Amy loves the personal aspect of social media and blogging which allows her to reach a diverse audience. On a personal level, Amy is excited to share her hobbies of rock climbing, canyoneering, scuba (that one may take a bit longer) and hiking with her daughter.
