#projectiterate: 3 Rules to Break On Social Media

There are a lot of social media “rules” out there. No one is truly an expert on social media. It’s always evolving and it’s always different. That’s why we love it! People connect and engage with all different sorts of things. The key is to find what connects your audience with your brand. The way to do this is from the moment you open your social media accounts start breaking some “rules”.

Disclaimer: social rules still apply. Don’t go spewing off nonsense and offending people. Unless that’s your brand’s shtick. Then good on you! You will be popular for a second and then your brand will waste away.

3 Rules we have learned to break

1. Keeping your follower count above your following count.

This is a game we see people playing constantly. Following people just to get followers. Someone might (key word might) look at your follower vs. following and think a bad thought about you. You know what’s worse than a fleeting judgement? Following someone, waiting for them to follow you back, and then unfollowing them! It’s rude, and is one of the fastest ways to lose credibility. Let’s be better than that.

Just follow people you want to follow. Whoever wants to follow you will do so. If you are genuine, put out quality content, and interact with people like they are human beings you will get your followers. Furthermore, you will get followers that stick with you, advocate for your brand, and engage with you. These are the followers that will make your time on social media worthy and uplifting. Don’t get me wrong. Finding your voice, being genuine, and doing things the right way is painfully slow (in social media time anyway). Just remember: Time passes quickly and when you are sitting pretty on a mountain of followers because you did the work, you will be happy.

2. Be cohesive, Have a color scheme, Tell your brand’s story

This is the one to break right out of the gate. Eventually you want your brand to be in a place where you are practicing all of those things. Well maybe not the color scheme. There are select groups of people that do this well and the rest of us would bore our audience to death. Right out of the gate you don’t actually know your brand’s story. Your brand belongs to your followers and customers. Until you get out in the world and start experimenting with different things you won’t know what they want. They will help you shape your brand and you should let them! So right out of the gate experiment! Use different colors, different voices, and change up your content. Make sure you are tracking what’s working and what’s not. This will help you focus and find your story when you have enough information to do so.

This does not include profile bios and pictures. An easy way to look professional is to make sure these are all cohesive.

Side story- when we started iterate I thought I was so smart and knew what people wanted from us. Turns out I didn’t have a clue. We were trying to follow all the rules and instead of helping us find our way it led us to a very boring place without an audience. We were embarrassed (because this is what we do (We should have 1,000's of followers!). It was only when we started breaking this particular rule that we started finding our voice and gaining followers. We still have a long road to go, but at least we are on the upswing.

3. Plan ahead, make a strategy, and stick to it.

Don’t freak out. Planning and having a plan is a good thing. Strategy works wonders. But let’s just be honest for a moment. If you are making a yearly plan for social media you are wasting your time! The environment changes rapidly. You need to be able to roll with the wave, or better yet, be on top and surfing the wave. Think about where you were 3 months ago and where you are now. You could be in the same place, but I doubt it. Base your strategy in goals rather than time frames. Plan ahead, but please, please, please don’t stick to a strategy for the sake of sticking to a strategy. It will stagnate you. We plan client’s social media strategy two weeks out, and leave open spaces to stay current. Building a brand is not a straight line. It’s a crazy, swirly, zigzag that goes up, goes down, side to side, and all over. People don’t need to see all the crazy details, but just know that’s how it is.

So go break some rules!

I tag @iansheacahir & @YouTooCanBeGuru! What three social media rules do you break? You don’t have to be tagged to participate. It’s just a way to get the ball rolling. ❤