Check Out This Brand-New Social Media Metric
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Listen up if you feel unsatisfied despite getting a lot of likes, or if your failed attempts at online stardom have made it harder for you to enjoy the Internet, or if you simply want the Internet to provide some sort of meaning in your life!
Likes, views, and followers are not the only forms of online success out there. Instead of aiming for these more traditional examples of achievement, you may want to consider achieving “effect.”
What does this mean? I’m using “effect” to refer to non-measurable forms of influence that your post may have on your audience. Examples of effect include: the length of time viewers will remember your post, the impact your message will have on your audience’s worldviews or personalities, the role your post plays in your audience’s life decisions, and the effect all of this has on the people around them.
Keep in mind that effect does not just refer to whether your audience agrees with your views. I wouldn’t want to promote the overdone agenda-pushing and ideology exploitation that have been plaguing the Internet. If your online output prompts a viewer to disagree with you, feel emotions, learn something new, come up with an idea of their own, or form a resolution, then it would also be gaining effect.
Here are some ways to gain effect on the Internet. You don’t necessarily need to use all of them, but they all help.
1. Quotability
2. Being unique (this could include a unique communication style, perspective, topic, or feature)
3. Covering topics that are not commonly-discussed yet but could be in the future
4. Making your purpose clear from the start
5. Ignoring trending topics
6. Obtaining followers who are socially active online or offline
7. Being unpredictable
8. Learning to make peace with the fact that it’s impossible to know how much effect you create
Despite that last point potentially turning people away from this option, it’s great for people who want to use the Internet to feel like something more than the number next to their post. Technology has offered us incredible possibilities. It would be wise to act on them.
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