Social Media like anything else requires commitment, time and patience. You must first pay your dues, learn and contribute, in order to get achievable results from it, of course all this depends on your objectives for using social media. If you’re new to this and going to be using it for any financial gain, either for yourself or a product your hawking, then read on. If you think creating accounts on every social networking site, and installing Twitter is the winning formula, you are wrong. The tools are only the facilitators of the message, as I have said countless times before. We must first learn to crawl before we can walk, so lets crawl, shall we..
Contribute:
Remember in order to get you must first give. Contribute as often and as much as you can. Contributing can be writing resourceful and useful blog posts, sharing and promoting other’s work. Do not hesitate to help people if they need assistance.
Comment:
Leave thoughtful and constructive comments as much as possible on other blogs. Don’t stop there, post comments on Facebook walls, FriendFeed, and Twitter. This promotes good practices in social media, and it also gives you an opportunity for exposure and link placement. This can lead into new networking opportunities and potential new friendships.
Conversation:
Find and participate in where the conversation is taking place. If you are using social media for marketing, this is very important. Find out where your current & potential customers are, and engage them. Establish a presence and contribute to the conversation, do not overpower and definitely do not spam, otherwise you will be shown the door rather quickly, and be exposed for a marketer, not a member of the community. We are giving and not getting at first, until we have earned the right to do so.
Community:
Just as in life we build a circle of friends based on our interests. Community is what social media is all about. Without the community, its just media, not social. Find the relevant communities and actively participate in them. Don’t expect to be accepted and welcomed right away, again this is earned.
Be proactive as much as possible:
Acting before a situation becomes a source of confrontation or crisis. That’s the definition of proactive. If friends solicit for help via Twitter or email, respond back in a timely fashion. If friends send you a gentle nudge, respond back. If friends need an extra Digg vote, don’t hesitate to help. When it becomes your time and a potential situation arises, you would hope that your network is there to catch you before you fall. Do onto others as you would want others to do onto you.
Share:
Remember one of the first things you learned as a kid? Play nice and share with your neighbors. Social media is all about getting the message out there. we do this in a variety of ways, one of which is sharing. Shine the spotlight onto others, if you expect the spotlight to be shined onto you. Sharing and self promotion is always a two-way street.
Do not promote yourself:
If you have a product to sell or are offering a service, keep those initiatives away from the communities, at least in the very beginning. If you jump into a community and your only goal is to hawk your wares, you will be seen as a marketer and not a contributor. I’m not saying it’s never okay to occasionally promote yourself, but there is a time and place. Again the right is earned, not given.
Build relationships:
Do not friend as many people as possible. All this builds is a list… Do build meaningful relationships with people. People you have taken a genuine interest in. It’s not about how many people you follow, but who you follow instead.
Image by Dyamasaki under Creative Commons License
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related posts:
yeah…
It's a very strange thing to me.. I guess I've been in social media for a while now.. 3 or 4 years I guess.. I have business goals but I haven't really bothered to execute on them too much.. so instead I've just been wandering around developing relationships with people, and having fun..
Still I'm the sorta personality that likes to fly before I learn to crawl.. always like to jump into the deep end of complexity before I've bothered too much with the basics.. the basics just don't interest me too much.. and I think of this.. and that there are some personalities that like to just go and jump in, and other's that tend to be a little more analytical about it.. if you jump in and make a lot of mistakes.. get bitten in the ass.. well, maybe you gain some wisdom that way.
I'm a little adverse to things like best practices or “this is what you should do” stuff.. not that it doesn't have a pragmatic value.. but because often this sorta thing can get in the way of our experience of the wonder of things.. And in a certain way, I think social media is sorta like that.. such a spirit of power diffusion.. the sorta economic creative destruction it brings to business as usual is like the voice of Dyonisious.. clearing the way of the old values to make room for the new..
None of this is to in anyway disagree with anything you've said.. its more about the question of how do we relate to it.
So idk.. hope that adds something to the conversation here…
matt
So true! I'm amazed at how many folks get into this by starting their own blogs – before they've really spent any time reading other blogs, making comments, social networking, etc..
yeah…
It's a very strange thing to me.. I guess I've been in social media for a while now.. 3 or 4 years I guess.. I have business goals but I haven't really bothered to execute on them too much.. so instead I've just been wandering around developing relationships with people, and having fun..
Still I'm the sorta personality that likes to fly before I learn to crawl.. always like to jump into the deep end of complexity before I've bothered too much with the basics.. the basics just don't interest me too much.. and I think of this.. and that there are some personalities that like to just go and jump in, and other's that tend to be a little more analytical about it.. if you jump in and make a lot of mistakes.. get bitten in the ass.. well, maybe you gain some wisdom that way.
I'm a little adverse to things like best practices or “this is what you should do” stuff.. not that it doesn't have a pragmatic value.. but because often this sorta thing can get in the way of our experience of the wonder of things.. And in a certain way, I think social media is sorta like that.. such a spirit of power diffusion.. the sorta economic creative destruction it brings to business as usual is like the voice of Dyonisious.. clearing the way of the old values to make room for the new..
None of this is to in anyway disagree with anything you've said.. its more about the question of how do we relate to it.
So idk.. hope that adds something to the conversation here…
matt
yeah…
It's a very strange thing to me.. I guess I've been in social media for a while now.. 3 or 4 years I guess.. I have business goals but I haven't really bothered to execute on them too much.. so instead I've just been wandering around developing relationships with people, and having fun..
Still I'm the sorta personality that likes to fly before I learn to crawl.. always like to jump into the deep end of complexity before I've bothered too much with the basics.. the basics just don't interest me too much.. and I think of this.. and that there are some personalities that like to just go and jump in, and other's that tend to be a little more analytical about it.. if you jump in and make a lot of mistakes.. get bitten in the ass.. well, maybe you gain some wisdom that way.
I'm a little adverse to things like best practices or “this is what you should do” stuff.. not that it doesn't have a pragmatic value.. but because often this sorta thing can get in the way of our experience of the wonder of things.. And in a certain way, I think social media is sorta like that.. such a spirit of power diffusion.. the sorta economic creative destruction it brings to business as usual is like the voice of Dyonisious.. clearing the way of the old values to make room for the new..
None of this is to in anyway disagree with anything you've said.. its more about the question of how do we relate to it.
So idk.. hope that adds something to the conversation here…
matt
Mike,
Good advice.. I like it… however you also need to accept failure, fail, get up and try again… Without failure you can't taste success
So true! I'm amazed at how many folks get into this by starting their own blogs – before they've really spent any time reading other blogs, making comments, social networking, etc..
Mike,
Good advice.. I like it… however you also need to accept failure, fail, get up and try again… Without failure you can't taste success
Great advice Mike. Just one thing — this statement:
“If you jump into a community and your only goal is to hawk your wares, you will be seen as a marketer and not a contributor.”
Swap out marketer for spammer and you're spot on — there's nothing wrong with being a marketer
Great advice Mike. Just one thing — this statement:
“If you jump into a community and your only goal is to hawk your wares, you will be seen as a marketer and not a contributor.”
Swap out marketer for spammer and you're spot on — there's nothing wrong with being a marketer
3 years ago my internet just started with my 3 cents earning and now it is more than $1000. I'll fall myself in crawl to jump category so I always look everything from that perspective. Perhaps it is in my nature and I'll not forget it ever.
3 years ago my internet just started with my 3 cents earning and now it is more than $1000. I'll fall myself in crawl to jump category so I always look everything from that perspective. Perhaps it is in my nature and I'll not forget it ever.
People just want a chunk of this “Social Media” pie… I don't care what it is, just let me have some.. lol
Perhaps many general rules are not applied to internet marketing. I am very impressed with all style of internet and internet trends. Everything is possible in internet but we should start very slowly in the beginning.
Perhaps many general rules are not applied to internet marketing. I am very impressed with all style of internet and internet trends. Everything is possible in internet but we should start very slowly in the beginning.
Mike,
Your 5 Cs of Social Media are very similar my 5 Cs of engagement:
http://koolaidantidote.wordpress.com/2008/09/04...
Question: Isn't commenting really a subset of conversation? And isn't conversation and contributing a subset of community?
Great Post! Keep up the good work. I have bookmarked your site for future reference.
Tom,
Thanks for the comment. That's a great post as well. Thanks for sharing it. They are both subsets of their parents, if you look at it that way, yeah
Did you happen to see my other post on the 5 Cs? It's a little more in depth and touches exactly on your comment. http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/01/what-soci...
Great tips how you can develop your networking skills. It's better to contribute before getting what you want. Share and contribute with others' blogs for you to have a broad network.
All those tips and advise were very admiring. Those tips were really to to impress but to express. I like the way you talk thing in an imaginable way. It's a great way to improve newbies in the field of social media and networking. “Right and Title is earned, Not given.” great article.
I agree , in order to write a good blog post it is necessary to contribute in other blogs, not only by reading them but to add some meaning to them by participating in discussions.
Great post. There's so much out there, the tendency is to create profiles everywhere, and then you forget to ever go back and get involved!
Building relationship is important. We are able to share opinions with people that have the same interest as us!Great information.
contributing and building a community will improve social media profile in a long run.
This is so correct post, it's truly amazing the way you are putting across basic principles, I am totally impressed!
Donna
In relation to building friends virtually and yes, personally, you are very correct here. Its not the quantity of friends that counts, but the quality.
Photo's like this should be put on an album just look at the baby's face isn't he adorable or what, Many printing companies had put out in the business because of online advertising, well we can't hide the fact that social media sites had been very popular now adays
Hey, I really enjoy your blog. I have a blog too in a totally unrelated field (Online Stock Trading) but I like to check in here on a regular basis, just to see what’s going on and it’s always interesting to say the least. It’s always entertaining what people have to say.
test