People want to interact and communicate with you and your business on social media. They want to be inspired and know your story. With the amount of stuff being shared on social media networks, you must make a concerted effort to stand out from the minutia. Don’t just copy and paste and hope someone clicks on your selling.
I go through my normal morning routine of checking what executive protection businesses post on social media. I come across these tweets and posts and shake my head at the absurdity that businesses and individuals push out on social media. No thought, strategy, or goals, just “Hey you, buy my stuff.” Executive Protection businesses are just hoping someone will come along and click the link.
Audiences, friends, colleagues, potential customers, and clients are all bombarded by this minutia, and these posts are just simply scrolled by because the tweets and posts are uninteresting, boring, and ho-hum. The messages didn’t tell them the why. Why should I buy your service/product or take the training? Instead, it is simply blah.
This is rampant everywhere on social media.
Usually, businesses that copy, paste, and hope get frustrated and give up and are the biggest complainers and naysayers that social media marketing doesn’t work.
Changing the Mindset
Change the mindset and get out of the copy, paste, and hope ditch. Ask yourself these questions before and during your social media marketing efforts.
- What is my overall social media marketing strategy?
- What is my strategy for this particular network? Is it likes or leads sales, customers, etc?
- What are my social media goals?
- Is this the right network to post this?
- Am I reaching the right market?
- Why should anyone care about this post?
- Is this post engaging and thoughtful, and does it convey the why?
- What is the objective of this post?
- Does my post have a call to action – what do I want people to do?
- Why is this post important to my market, client, and customers?
- Does it provide value?
Provide Context
Our average focused attention span is 8 seconds, down 4 seconds from 14 years ago. To put that in perspective, our attention span is less than a gnat and a goldfish!
What is it that holds our attention for those 8 seconds on a tweet, a post, or a page? It is context.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, context is defined as the words that are used with a certain word or phrase and that help to explain its meaning. The image, video, or message in that post or tweet affects you in some way – emotionally or cognitively. You can relate to or understand the message immediately. It clicks. For example, a video about a dog doing crazy tricks grabs your attention because you love animals, or you have a dog and want it to do those tricks, or even simply because it is funny. Because of context, you are more apt to click the like button and share the message.
Context is the story that adds relevancy to your message.
Understand the medium
Each social media network is very different, even though they are starting to look and act the same. Images might work best on Facebook and Pinterest, but to be successful, you also have to understand the demographics in each medium. For instance, Pinterest users are primarily women who are interested in purchasing or wanting a particular product, whereas Facebook is more for social interaction with friends, family, and colleagues. So, the images could be completely different.
Further Recommendations
- Focus on the end user that will see the post, not your own ego
- Give quality, insightful information away for free – and do it often.
- Stop selling and start telling your story.
- Be creative. Think beyond copy, paste, and hope.
