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The Cover of Understanding the social in Social Media, developed by Shamim-Ur-Rashid
In my books Understanding the Social in Social Media and Social Success in Social Media, I explain how important it is to use social behaviors on social media, if you want to succeed in marketing on social media. I often think of social media as a virtual networking space and much like with an in-person networking event, there are certain behaviors that will turn people off and other behaviors that will make people want to get to know you better. To some degree social behaviors on social media are dependent on the given social media platform you are using. What might work on Facebook, won’t necessarily work on Tumblr. What works on Linkedin won’t work on Twitter. Different platforms have different features and these features need to be taken into account when using social media.
For example, on Linkedin, one of the most underused features is the ability to send a message after someone has connected to you. Many people don’t take advantage of the fact that someone has chosen to connect with them on Linkedin to actually send a personalized message back once the connection has been accepted. However, if you are on Linkedin and you chose to perform such an action, you could create an opportunity to get to know someone better, or even get some business as a result of what you wrote. Whenever I accept a Linkedin invitation to connect, I write back, thanking the person for connecting with me and asking them how I can help them better serve their clients. I also offer a complimentary business coaching session. Not everyone responds and the majority of responses indicate the person isn’t looking for business coaching, but on a few occasions, I’ve actually gotten business as a result of writing that message. I figure a person connecting with me on Linkedin is at least open to the idea of coaching.
On Facebook, comments are what indicate that you’ve hit social gold. If someone is commenting on something you’ve shared, you want to write back, both to keep the status update on the newsfeed and because a comment is an invitation to actually have a conversation. If you don’t comment back it might be considered rude, because it indicates you don’t want to have a conversation. With that said, sometimes there is nothing to say or you may not want to comment if you feel like the comment is adversarial.
My advice on social media is spend some time learning the various features of a given site and then study how people interact. By doing that you’ll learn what people do that’s successful as well as unsuccessful. Don’t hesitate to ask other people what works or doesn’t work either. Remember that social media isn’t just about the technology but also the relationships you develop as a result of interacting with people using social media.
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