Engaging With Social Media

The biggest mistake most people make with social media is that they treat it like an advertisement channel.

Once they have their accounts up and running they are like a mini marketing machine. Tweets and posts fly around with their latest offers or details of what they do.

But there are a few problems with that:

• People will get very bored of you very quickly
• You will be unfollowed left, right and centre
• You’re not adding value

Basically, you’ve missed the point of social media altogether.

Engagement is the name of the game – listening to others, asking questions and joining in the conversation.

Making the most of social engagement

There are a few easy ways you can make the most of your social media engagement that will help you enhance your relationships with your followers. As with most things in life, you only get out what you put in – so if you sit back and wait for others to come to you, you could be waiting an awfully long time.

1. Targeting your geographical area

You can enhance your local networking by searching for people in your own geographical area by using www.search.twitter.com . The advance search facility will also allow you to search for people tweeting about topics you’re interested in, hash tag discussions etc.

Using this facility you can tweet smarter by finding the people you want to engage with.

2. Questions

Asking questions (and answering them) is a great way to build interaction and engagement. Twitter is an amazing tool for finding information. If you have an IT problem, want to find a particular product, need some advice or a local supplier just send out a tweet and people will respond.

But don’t forget you must give as well as take. Be helpful and respond to other people if you want them to help you.

3. Fountain of knowledge

It’s unlikely you’ll be able to answer every question you see asked so set up searches for things you can help with. For example, I’ve set up searched for people with copywriting queries. Then when a question is asked, I get to see it and can respond.

So if you are a property lawyer you can set up searches related to property, if you’re a chiropractor you can set up searches for people looking for help with back complaints.

4. Don’t automate

There are a lot of people who automate their social media activities. You may think that’s a smart thing to do because it saves you time, but it’s not that smart.

Social media is about being social so automating your tweets could be like sending a video of yourself to a party rather than being there in person.  If someone sends you a tweet and you’re not there, how can you respond to it?

The only automated tweets I send are the ones that give links to my blogs because I have the blog RSS feed linked to Twitter. Everything else is me so I can be responsive to any tweets I receive.

After all if a customer rang you, would they rather get an answer phone or speak to you in person?

5. Patience

If you think that setting up a load of social media accounts is going to suddenly launch you into the social stratosphere, think again.

Building a following and getting to grips with social media isn’t going to happen instantly. It will take time and strategy.

Be patient, watch, participate and learn.

It’s very easy to be tempted to use social media as an advertising channel but if you do you’ll just hack off a load of people.

Social media is real life interaction – it just takes place online.

Think of it as virtual networking – if you walked into a room of strangers and tried to start selling to them you’d soon be given the cold shoulder. Networking, in all forms, is about listening, chatting, asking and answering questions and generally getting to know people.

Do that in a social media environment and you’ll start to engage and build relationships.