So… we all finally figured out and are ready to admit out loud… WE NEED TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA.
Whatever your business, path in life, age, gender… Social media is here to stay an it is an extension of our identity. Obviously, that is within the rules and norms that guide its functioning. (Meaning you shouldn’t be reading this if you’re under 13 if you found it through social media, maybe a bit younger if you just found it online).
However, everyone is focusing in teaching us how to sell and go viral. We are learning marketing strategies and building sales funnels and connections, but very few people are really learning what social media truly is and how everything works. What’s even worse, if everybody is selling, then who’s going to buy?
So… hear me out. Let’s take a couple of steps back.
Before you set your first Facebook ad, take at least a month, a full month to just use regular personal accounts in the main social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
With that in place start finding what you like. Find the celebrities and media outlets you like and start following them. Notice what you like and what you need more of. Start participating in dialogue and content sharing and see how you feel about that.
Then start looking into how each platform works, and follow that by finding new content creators that you might have not found through your regular experience or connections. Learn how you found them and how others came in touch with them. Why? Well… if you go into sales or promotion, you’ll be one of those content creators that may not have been found on regular media, and you want to know how it is they find you.
Now that you’re more familiar, you still need to do a bit more. Now you need to learn the triad of social media engagement:
A like or reaction in any platform makes contents grow.
A comment keeps contents alive and growing, but it also provides feedback to their creators. And the key element that allows for things to go viral and reach more audience than they would otherwise is to share. When you share content, you allow you own audience to come in contact with it. If you have “just” a hundred followers, those will be 100 people who may not have otherwise found that content.
Put it to practice, and make it an habit. Make sure every time you interact with content on social media you are able to see if it interests you. If you don’t care about it, just keep browsing, if it catches your eye check it out, and make sure you see what it is really about. Click on the post, check the source, and if it interests you enough, interact! If there are links or missing text, make sure you actually looked at that content before you give a reaction. Some posts are not what they appear to be, so you may give the wrong reaction to the content they really promote.