Ding!
This is your Captain speaking. You see a lot of tip posts on blogs for specific social media services, which is like flying low to the ground and looking at only one thing. What I want to do here is fly up to 30,000 feet to see the social media landscape from the air and think about big picture strategy. Keep in mind I’m coming from a marketing perspective. Although I certainly do love to have fun with social media, my primary goal for using it is marketing. With that in mind, here are my 10 social media tips from 30,000 feet:
- Know why you’re using a service. I use StumbleUpon because it brings me traffic and helps me drive traffic to my friends. I use Twitter to gain influence and reach and develop mutually beneficial relationships with others. You need to know why you’re using a service: you need to know what you expect to be able to do for others and what you hope to gain.
- Know what your followers or friends want, and give it to them (that’s like 80% of the whole thing right there, seriously). I sum this up in two words: provide value. This strategy is summed up nicely in my post, How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog with StumbleUpon and Twitter.
- Cross-pollinate your friends from one social media service to another. If I tell my Twitter followers I’m on StumbleUpon or Facebook, I will get new followers “crossing over” from social media service to another.
Use the same avatar for each service so that you’re instantly recognizable by your friends from other services. Your familiar face will catch their eye. I’ve become recognizable for my black hat picture.- Help others unconditionally. Doing so attracts people to you and helps you be seen as an expert. I know this doesn’t seem very “markety” but that’s the point: it’s actually the best marketing you can do. If somebody showed they gave a damn and helped you solve a problem or answer a question, wouldn’t you be more inclined to follow/friend that person, maybe check out their blog?
- Automate CAREFULLY. Automation is something done excessively by social media spammers, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use it. Automate to make posting less repetitive, but be extremely careful about artificially generating content. That turns people off, and turned-off people don’t buy from you. About all I do in this regard is have my blog posts automatically tweeted 2 times a day. That’s it. It’s just one small thing I do to save myself a little time.
- Form alliances with others. Form reciprocal arrangements with other people. It’s the golden rule of social media: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s also a powerful force in psychological persuasion called reciprocity. If you vote up/bookmark/retweet the contributions of people in your alliance, and they do it for you, you all gain together.
- Put in the time. If you don’t, you will not get what you want from social media. This is the hardest point for many to deal with. They just don’t have the time. My advice is to pick two social media sites that resonate with you and use them. You don’t need to be everywhere. You can cross-pollinate your friends between the two services easily.
- Take breaks. You can wear your followers and friends out if you over-use a service. They’ll get sick of you, even if you’re providing value. It’s like the social media version of that person at the party who just won’t shut up and you want to wring his neck.
- Use the right tools. Many social media services have a way for other programs to access the services’ data via the internet. This is called an API (application programming interface). Other programs can use a service’s API to make that service much easier and more appealing to use. Many social media platforms have a host of third-part tools we can use, such as TweetDeck for Twitter.
That concludes our flight at 30,000 feet. We hope you enjoyed your bird’s eye view of the social media landscape, and we hope you found these tips useful. Here’s something to remember about tips: they’re suggestions, not commands. Comments on your in-flight blog post will now be collected below as we descend back to ground. This is your Captain, Michael Martine, thanking you for flying Remarkablogger Airlines.
Ding!
Photo credit: DrPleishner
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi there captain Michael,
I’m happy to report that all you’ve posted here is entirely correct. For the moment I don’t use any kind of automation. Do you think Stumbleupon can be more powerful then Digg ? (I’m asking this because today I’ve created digg accounts for a few of my friends from my computer and show them how to use it and in about an hour I got all the accounts including mine suspended. I don’t know if it’s worth starting again).
Good job captain. See you on the next mission.
I come here from a tweet of @GrantGriffiths. You ten tips are really informative and useful for a greenhorn like me.
I liked the view from 30,000 feet, Michael. All well said, and totally accurate (at least from where my newbie toes are in the water). Thanks.
Great perspective–there are so many detailed “how” articles on this, but not a lot of “why.” Nice!
@Toma – Pick the services that resonate with your market. For me, that is definitely NOT Digg. It’s different for everyone.
@Phao – Thanks. Hope you subscribe and stick around for more!
@Writer Dad – Glad it’s copacetic.
@Sonia – How without Why has no Where.
30.000 feets wow.. it’s amazing
Hi Mike,
That should be the most productive flight ever, eh?
I like the way your new site looks.
“Automating” blog posts as twitter feeds is indeed an amazing little thing that saves me at least about 15 mins which I could use to read a blog or even write an article. I did just that and it’s a breeze.
Moving on to stumbleupon. Let’s see how that works out.
Ash
These are some great tips Michael!
Any service is only good if that is where your community is. You have to constantly test new services to see if you have some of your community hanging out there and also to cyber-squat your name should the service take off. But, you always have to settle into a couple services that you will fully utilize. Right now, for me, it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon. I play on a bunch of other sites but those are the ones I put a lot of time into.
-Justin
Michael
We at times do without thinking. We’re all guilty on this one.
People just want something in return, from a particular service; beyond that, they likely have no clue why they use the services they choose.
Promoting value, can’t go wrong with advice like that. What if people don’t know how? What does value look like? Depends on who you ask. You’re right on about forming alliances, I call it blogging mentors. Being useful and helping to inspire others, you can’t go wrong.
Again, you’re right… don’t spam twitter or other social sites with your own crap. Take breaks and show some love. Solid post bro.
-Miguel
About point no 4, thats not always true, what is really matter is the nickname, i often use this nickname and with different avatar in a lot of social media and they can still recognized me
Stumbleupon and Twitter have done good by me.
The cross pollination tip is great.
Can you suggest any automated tools for very light automation?
@Jim – A couple automation services are http://futuretweets.com and http://tweetlater.com.