So, you know that social media is big. You use social media. You are probably active. You took the pain of setting up your social media accounts for yourself (personal branding?) and for your business.
Now, you strive to keep your social media accounts active. You go all out to make sure that you are tweeting, posting, updating, sharing, producing new content everyday, and amplifying your business brand.
God knows, you’ve done it all.
Yet, you don’t see much happening. You do see occasional activity on your social profiles like receiving thanks. People responding to your questions, and all that jazz.
But, where the heck is the money? Why aren’t sales happening? Why isn’t anyone buying? I got bills to pay and all I get is all these strangers saying hello, cool, and thanks?
No one is buying because social media is like a party you have been pushed into unsuspectingly. You are a reluctant social animal now, with a virtual forest that now became your habitat.
How the heck will you make sense of it all? What do you do really use social media for (apart from sharing your content and saying “hello” and “thanks” a thousand times?
Stop trying to make sense of it. Social media is complex.
Social media isn’t like a TV program, a newspaper, a billboard, or a magazine’s center spread.
You don’t try to wing it here. Don’t try to spam. Don’t push. Don’t appear needy. Don’t come on too strong. Don’t even show up sometimes (if you can).
There’s only way way to use Social Media, and it’s this
Stop being so darned selfish
Let’s admit it. The reason for everything you do online today is a selfish one. You are on LinkedIn because you are looking for leads for your business. You are Twitter and Facebook because you want more followers, you want traffic to your website, you want to grow your tribe, or you want to pamper yourself with a massive ego kick.
Either way, it’s all about you. You are doing it all because you are still focusing on “You”.
With time, this becomes an obsession. So much that businesses even hire “others” to do this on a regular basis.
It’s always about you, your business, your achievements, your recent $3.5 billion deal, and your cat.
Stop this madness already.
Connect with people, Like You Really Should
When you employ the right ways to use social media, you win. That requires you to connect, feel, empathize, understand, be positive, and generous.
Without a specific agenda, it’s hard to send out an email, a direct message on Twitter, reach out to someone on LinkedIn (after spending a fortune on InMail). Social media gives you a chance to connect with absolutely anyone in the whole world, and that’s exactly what you should be doing.
Get in touch with real people in your network. Write to them like you write to a long-lost friend.
Find someone doing something awesome? Write to them to congratulate them.
Someone needs help? Solve their problem.
Your LinkedIn 2nd degree connection is looking for a job? Reach out to your 1st degree connections to see if you can help.
You get the drift?
Don’t expect anything
Reaching out to your own social network is easy but dealing with the ramifications of that outreach isn’t.
People don’t always write back. They don’t reciprocate. They won’t communicate with you. Some walls are impossible to breach. A few other times, you’d have to rinse and repeat. In most cases, you’d have to work really hard just to say hello and get noticed.
You’d have to do all of that without expecting anything.
Social media won’t give you anything. You can only earn.
Stop treating social media networks like fish markets. If you want to sell fish, there are markets for that.
Like Jay Baer of Convince and Convert puts it, there’s “social” in social media.
Just saying…