There was a lot of buzz (New York Times,CNN, Reuters, to name a few) about how Barack Obama got aFacebook page yesterday. The President said he wanted a place to have real conversations and give people more access to the President, or at least to his 20-person social media team. I guess his new Facebook page will accomplish something that his 68-million-follower@BarackObama Twitter account, his 5-million-follower @potus Twitter account, or his 45-million-followerother Facebook account that he’s had for years could not accomplish. So, with all the buzz about social media, I thought I’d talk about one of the questions I get the most, which is how to effectively use social media.
As I’ve written before, I’m no social media guru, but I can certainly share the tips and tricks that I have picked up in the last few years.
What Do You Want Out of Social Media?
If you just want to use it as an outlet to type whatever pops into your head, have at it. But, if you want to use social media to get more clients or to be more visible, there are rules to follow. The exciting thing about social media is being able to reach so many people. I only have about 460 followers on Twitter, but I have hundreds of thousands of impressions just from the last few months alone from people interacting with me and reading things that I wrote and other people talking about me.
The goal on social media is to get noticed. It’s like when it’s election time and you see all of those “Vote for X” signs in peoples’ yards and on street corners. No one is going to drive to the store and see one of those signs and think, “You know what? I think I willvote for him.” It’s more about being on the forefront of people’s minds and constantly reminding people that you are still relevant. To do that, though, you have to be seen in people’s feeds every so often, not just once a month. Remember posting and being seen are two totally different things. To be seen, you have to stand out from the other garbage in their feeds. You can do that by posting to your own followers, but the power of social media is getting your followers to repost your things, which puts you in front of your followers’ followers, and then some of their followers, and so on. The trick is to say things that are so interesting that your followers would want to share it with their followers. Here are some hints on how to do that and what not to do. I’ll start with Twitter and cover others in later posts.
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