Philosophical Takes on Social Media Strategy
To be quite honest, as a private person, I hate social media. Well, I don’t actually hate the media part, just the social bit. I know this seems strange coming from a guy with 32.7K tweets who runs social accounts for companies, blogs etc, but it will get easier to understand when I’m done explaining.
Social Networks as a Way to Socialize
Through my years of using Facebook, Twitter and other networks for private purposes I’ve noticed one blatantly obvious thing, something that everyone seems to be ignoring. Your friends, no matter how much you love them, are actually wonderfully boring. This is coming from a person who loves their friends dearly (don’t be mad, guys) and who understands he’s equally as boring. Here’s why.
Because human behavior is vastly complex, its transliteration to any mainstream social medium isn’t exactly smooth. This ultimately results in sub-par engagement. As a private person, to constantly post something truly compelling you need to a) treat your friends like your audience, b) analyze that audience, c) put in a ton of creative effort into curating your content and d) understand how social platforms work, optimize accordingly. Additionally, you have to realize you should actually be posting for them, not your selfish self. Problem is, as a private person, you don’t try to do any of these things.
Instead, you post and share things on a whim. Things like your feelings at the time (nope, not that interesting), a song you like (and which drives many of your friends insane at parties), time wasting things such as memes and gifs (I like the one with the Dos Equis guy). Since we’re not doing these four things, and because of long spans between networks actually introducing new, revolutionary tools which enable regular folk to be more engaging, we’re destined to rinse and repeat what we post.
This is what happens when a human being gets exposed to a limited platform. It gets much easier to notice patterns. Mine usually involve posting a metal song, some hip-hop tune, a movie I’m watching, something funny and, of course, hockey related stuff. Now, I’m betting that most of my contacts find this cycle annoying. Don’t worry, this is all perfectly normal, just not very engaging for your friends.
Patterns are one of the main reasons why big data works, why Google can probably predict when you have to pee and such. But besides the obvious benefits of Google telling me when I have to go, therein lies a problem, and an answer to the opening paragraph. Unless you’re actively trying, are wonderfully interesting by nature or are using social media to discus a topic with a group of people interested in that topic, you can seem flat even to the people that love your personality in real life. By making us look less dimensional than we are, social networks could be leaving a negative mark on human interactions. If this really is social, I’m not sure it’s actually working.
With that in mind (and no, no one specifically told me they hate what I post) I developed a simple, yet effective reasoning for my private social media usage. My premise for this is that you should generally like the people you connect with. Here goes.
“The point of having a social network account is blatantly spamming these people with stuff you like at a particular time. Don’t think too hard about what you post and presume that most of the people you connected with tolerate your posts, tweets, whatever, because they like you and because you tolerate the stuff they post. Some of them will actually like it, just as you like their stuff. In the end, you basically posted that content for them and yourself.” — me.
That said, if your online persona is so drastically different from who you are in real life — well, there’s always that unfollow button for Dr. Jekyll.
Companies Disguised as People
I’ll ask you a question. Who is the most engaging person on your social media feed? Is it a person, or is it a brand you follow? You see, brands and companies actually do all of those things I mentioned earlier. You ARE their audience. They invest a ton of money into targeted analytics, product placement and advertising to make themselves attractive to you, the consumer. Hard to believe, I know, but this is normal. We live in a consumerist society and you are going to buy stuff.
The fact that’s worth talking about here is, because of all the effort, manpower and money spent on crafting Nike’s latest video, it’s the most appealing thing on my social feed. Not my friend’s mood description, not my cousin’s lame cat video, but LeBron James dunking over a giant wall while channeling his inner Yoda and teaching me about the universe (they didn’t film this one yet, but you get my epically commercialized point).
Would social work better if all your friends suddenly began acting as companies and producing high-level social media engagement? It would make my time on social media more enjoyable, yes. Would a platform which allowed them to expose more personality be even better? Probably. Fact is, most your friends aren’t online sociopaths who view friends as their audience. I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing.
To close out this chapter about private use, I think we need another platform, one better integrated with our behavior to be considered truly social. My friends are indeed awesome and I need more of their awesomeness on my feed. Then again, this likely won’t happen because the addition of bloatware-type features to social media platforms has become universal, creating similar interactions across all networks. It also doesn’t benefit users all that much, but rather helps companies monetize you. As a private user, this is what I don’t like.
Flipping the Script on Social Approach for Companies
Let’s turn our attention to the business of social media. Now, before I go into this, there are plenty of other articles out there discussing the numbers battle between organic and sponsored social engagement in depth so I’m not going to. My article is about philosophy, about understanding why people want to be marketed and talked to as people. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s continue.
Because of everything stated above, I truly feel that companies and brands tend to make much better use of social media than regular people. I mean that in both the utilitarian and the end-result sense. They make money off it, they gain intelligence from it and they are way cooler than most people. However, this is where it gets interesting. Just because I feel that most people can’t act like companies on social media doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t act more human.
Organic is Honest and Vice-versa
Whether you’re doing your own thing, or representing a company on social media, you can’t go wrong by being honest and lightweight. Honesty means admitting mistakes, correcting them and it means showing people what your company is all about. By being moderate and lightweight, you’re not shoving your brand in their faces. Do you appreciate these things? So does your audience.
We live in a world where companies constantly compete for consumer attention. In this saturated market, this means consumers have less time they can allocate to your company. Your consumers are simultaneously someone else’s consumers, if you annoy them you’ll likely lose their attention (and likes) pretty quickly. When acting as consumers, people tend to see through your bullshit more effectively. It’s amazing, but when deciding to spend our hard earned time (which is today’s big currency) and money we suddenly all become Einsteins. When it comes to social networks and communities, it’s even easier to be branded as annoying and fake when competing for that attention.
Recently, I had a guy follow me on Twitter and everything he tweets is about selling paintings. Literally, each one of his tweets contained a shortened link to the site where you’d buy the art, the picture of the painting and a short description. His profile on Twitter even had a link to his website complete with UTM parameters. Don’t be that guy.
Note that I’m not advising you against tracking your links and yes, I understand the attribution process with online lead generation. That said, you can always afford to be less obnoxious, loud and make it look like you’re not tracking everything. Whatever your company does, you can afford to make a social connection with your consumer base. In fact, I think you should do exactly that when starting your social media journey.
Start by Being Organic
Remember that bit about attention a few paragraphs ago? You’ll manage to earn more of it by being real and being reachable. This is the real meaning behind organic social media. When users trust your service, you earn loyalty points which you can spend later. But more on that later.
Organic likes, follows etc. are the best kind of connections your business can make with people. They represent the strongest social media bond between your brand and your consumer. Yet, time and time again, I see new companies throwing buckets of money into social media advertising without doing anything that their consumer base really cares about. The thinking here is, if I put enough money in it, it has to work.
Mind you, this can even be a sound strategy for established companies with large audiences, that make good content/products and want to promote, but for new players looking to leave a mark on social media this shows a complete lack of understanding of what people they are trying to reach actually want. Wait, let me rephrase that. You know what they want, but aren’t doing anything to pave the way to get to a point where you can actually offer it.
Many marketers feel that organic connections are the hardest to acquire. In reality, it’s not that hard, you just have to get in touch with the person (you) behind the social media account. Focus on being that highlight reel for your consumer, user or fan. In the end, people are people, they’ll follow/like you because you’re either useful or cool. Even if you’re more engaging than their friends, you’re not one, so be careful. They can always go and purchase what you offer elsewhere, but they stay on social media because they get something out of it.
Did you like that engaging Nike content example, the imagined viral star of my private feed? Well, your customers want to experience something like that at first. If you think about it, the organic approach works on you, too. Think about what you want to see from a great brand, one you like but maybe don’t follow on Twitter yet. Now go check out their feed (after finishing this article, of course) and see if you like the stuff they tweet. Side note — Twitter I like(d), because it was stripped bare of features and thus, totally utilitarian — people accepted and never pretended it was more social than that.
Staying on Message
Social media is about finding the right balance between marketing/sales goals and stuff your users want and like. It’s also about maintaining brand image, convincing them that you’re that right company that has that something, so that simply using your product makes them cool. Or, it’s about actually being that. However, first and foremost, it’s about building your audience. And, what kind of audience you want to build starts with how you want to build it.
We all want to see something clever, something funny, something that’s unique and genuine about your company. We already like you, so we’ll spread the word even more if you’re being awesome to us. Imagine not being mentally singled out in someone’s feed as being a company. Don’t go overboard and become indistinguishable in their feeds, capture their emotions.
In the long run, this kind of approach is how you grow your base, your brand gets talked about more and people generally have a positive feeling about what you do. If you do it right, your followers will become some of your company’s best friends. “Word of mouth” might be a buzzword, but that word gets around.
Organic vs. Paid
The big dilemma. Certain friends (whose love for social media curating doesn’t make them more engaging on their private Facebook) often ask should they even bother with sponsored content seeing how I’m so focused on evangelizing organic? Well, we could also go back to the stone age and not use the wheel, but we’re not going to. It also depends on the type of business you’re in. Without knowing the specifics, I’d advise a combination of the two.
Most of the time, when starting a business and diving into social media, you should probably focus on being organic with sponsored content filling the gaps. It makes sense from a financial and brand-building aspect of things. Next, ask yourself what is it that you want to achieve on social media? If one of your goals is creating a solid, marketable social fan base, then my advice holds water.
By consistently providing engaging, likeable organic content, you’ll entertain, entice and captivate your fans. This way, you’ll also be opening an avenue for your sponsored content. If you’re not constantly selling, people will listen when you actually have something to offer.
