Attitudes
I think it’s important for people to understand that social media is not a fad. It’s become such a huge part of our daily lives, and its uses are beyond what most people ever thought they would be used for. People need to gain a better understanding of how social media has changed the way we communicate. Pretending like it doesn’t exist or ignoring the importance of having strong social media presence is only hurting your business. It’s like going to a job interview without pants on, you’re just begging for bad things to happen! Social media has changed the world in so many ways, and if you don’t embrace that fact then your business will suffer tremendously in the long run. I can go on and on about this subject, but I know there are some people who aren’t quite as interested in learning about how important social media really is so I won’t bore those individuals with my rants about this topic any longer. Social Media isn’t going anywhere! Embrace it now before it’s too late!!! Let’s move onto Habits…
Habits
Social Media strategy should be made up of habits and not just one big thing that you start implementing all at once. You can not expect yourself to implement every single thing listed below all at once without expecting some kind of failure along your journey, even if your strategy works out exactly as planned (which rarely happens). Start slow. My strategy is made up of daily habits, not big ones. I do things that are manageable for me and repeat those actions over and over again until it becomes who I am as a person. If you’re serious about making your social media strategy work, you need to understand this concept and make it into a habit to create smaller goals within your larger goals… It’s like building the foundation for a house 😉
1) Find ways to interact on a regular basis with people in your industry. This will help you to build relationships with them so that when the time comes they’ll be willing to promote or support your business in some way. If you’re not sure where there’s an audience that would be interested in what you have to offer then start searching places like reddit, google+, twitter, facebook groups/pages/people, etc… Just interact! Try hashtags (like #hashtags), follow leaders in this space who can give tips (I’m always willing to answer questions), ask questions if there is something specific that interests you (you might learn something new about social media or even get featured on someone else’s blog!), retweet others content. Listen to others, but also share your opinions, ideas, thoughts on things. You need to be active in the online social world if you want your social media strategy to work out. Don’t just talk about yourself all of the time! Let others have their say too 🙂 I could go on and on about this subject, but for now let’s move onto Habit #2…
2) Post your content at least once every day. This is probably my favorite habit that I’ve implemented into my strategy because it has lead me down a path where I’m being contacted by lots of people who want me to write and post content for them! It also helps with growing an audience faster than other methods so it’s best not to neglect this one 😉 If you’re like me then you might not have a ton of free time during the day to spend writing blog posts or answering comments/questions from others so make sure you plan out when and what times are best for you in order to maximize efficiency 🙂
3) Interact with people daily (in some form or fashion). Not everyone will respond back when interacting with them via social media platforms like twitter or facebook (especially if they don’t know who you are), but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Just about every interaction adds up little by little until there is a significant amount of people following/liking/sharing your content which leads them back into your site where they can see something else that they’ll like.
Habits are what make up your social media strategy, and they’re by far the most important part of it. The things I mentioned above will help you develop your habits into something that will help you grow as a person and a businessperson.
Actions
The final habit that I want to touch on is one that is often overlooked by many people out there who aren’t quite sure how to go about making their social media strategy work for them. There are tons of tools out there for free which can be used to help manage social media accounts (like HootSuite, TweetDeck, Buffer, etc…), but the main point of this section is all about being active in your posts! This doesn’t mean simply posting links with something like “Click Here” or “Check This Out” over and over again… You need to actually interact with people via comments/replies/tweets/shares too! It’s very easy to just post content and not have anything else happen afterwords so take it upon yourself to do more 🙂 It might take several interactions before someone decides they want to follow you or retweet something you posted (if ever) but once it does happen it’ll feel pretty awesome!