The ONE thing you need to understand about social media

I’m responsible for digital marketing & communications at a large Canadian advocacy organization.

Colleagues and friends frequently ask for social media advice. This short post is meant for them. If you happen to have just stumbled upon this post, I hope it’ll help you too.

Note: if you’re already a digital-first communicator or social media professional, this won’t be revolutionary.

The objective of this post is to articulate the one principle about social media that most non-digital professionals don’t think about. By making this principle a part of your mindset, you can set your social media game apart:

The whole point of social media is to build an audience.

That sounds self-evident, but think about it for a second.

Marketers used to rely on content creators — newspapers, radio stations, TV networks, etc — to build an audience. Then, the marketer would pay the content creator for access to the audience (through advertisements).

This model still exists, even in the digital world. You can pay websites or social media companies to serve your ad to their audience.

But social media gives you the power to build your own audience. Once you’ve built your audience, you can put your message in front of them any time you want.

BONUS TIP:

Social media companies make money by showing advertisements. The longer users stay on their site, the more ads they can show. The more ads they show, the more money they make.

That’s why social media companies have complicated algorithms that shows users content they’ll be interested in, and buries content that’s boring.

Nothing is more honest than a social media algorithm. If your post is irrelevant, nothing you can do — including paying to boost it — will make it preform well.

Algorithms determine if content is interesting by how much engagement (ie. likes, shares, clicks, etc) it receives.

The more engaging content you post, the better your reputation with the social media companies algorithm. And the better your reputation, the more people in your audience will be served your content by the social media company.

That’s why it’s okay to post things for the simple purpose of boosting engagement. For example, a provocative poll or video is sure to generate lots of reactions. While it may not be linked to something you’re working on today, you can consider these types of posts an investment in your page’s reputational future.