Social Media Strategies, Etiquette & Survival Strategies For The Social Media Newbie! (Part 2)

Welcome Back to the second part of our Social Media Survival Strategies

‘Rules of Engagement’. The best advice I have ever been given regarding this was by a 7-figure earner who built his business up almost entirely using social media. His advice was: Use social media like a normal person would, you don’t want to come across like a spammer! In our zeal to ‘play’ with our new marketing ‘toys’ and in our desire to get our message out there, as social media newbies we tend to run the risk of rushing head-long into the trap of posting way too much and way too often. DON’T – you will end up just pissing people off and they will unfriend or unfollow you! Remember our golden rule: Friends first, business cards second.

‘It’s A Cocktail Party, not a First Date!’ Solicit me, don’t smooch me! Follow me, interact with me. Like and comment on my posts on facebook, and retweet my content and send me the occasional @ reply on twitter. JUST DON’T DO IT ALL OF THE TIME ON EVERY PIECE OF CONTENT I POST! (To give you an example, I have someone who asked if they could add me on Skype and now every morning, they send me ‘Wishing you a fabulously blessed day’ message. It’s too much – you have to be very close family to get more than a ‘grunt’ out of me first thing in the morning! I don’t want to have to join in your morning salutations every day of the week.

‘Different Platforms Have Different Rules Of Engagement’. On facebook it is acceptable to spend a little more time with each individual person, forming a bond and forging the beginnings of a relationship. In fact it is essential. if you don’t form some kind of interactive realtionship with a person at the beginning, facebook’s algo-rhythms mean that they will never see or hear of you again in their newsfeed.

On twitter, think true ‘social butterfly’. Don’t even think about trying to form 'meaningful relationships' and relying to each and every tweet. You will be labeled ‘wierd’.

Think about it: the different terminology almost spells it out. On Facebook you have ‘friends’, there is more space in each message to interact and communicate.

Twitter has ‘followers’ – people ‘flit’ in and flit out again. Little nuggets, sent via a mobile phone. Not lasting love affairs (take the relationship off-line to do that)

‘Don’t Be A Stalker’ Take the above lessons to heart and work out your own comfort zones around how much is too much?

‘Sometimes it’s ok to just SHUT UP AND LISTEN!!’ – Just because the party is going 24/7, it doesn’t mean you have to be a part of it for all that time.

Take the time to sit back, breathe, observe and get ot know. Your friends and followers will love you for it

‘How to Get Seen’ – Insider tricks of the trade for Twitter:  post 2-3 tweets simultaneously – given all the noise, it is easy to get lost in the crowd – Posting in this way means that as people scroll down, they see your 'head in a little ‘block’ rather than in isolation. This means you are more likely to catch their eye, make them stop and pay attention.

(NOTE: a technique best used sparingly and saved for when you have something really great to say that you don’t want people to miss. Do it all the time and you will just appear like an attention seeker.)

Again, If you have any great tips to pass on or strategies to share to help others avoid going ‘missing, presumed killed in action’, please share them below. We’d love to hear from you  

To your Social Media Success