SOCIAL MEDIA 101
I got a call this morning from a journalist by the name of Joel Rice. Joel wrote a story for McSweeney’s about one of our clients, the legendary skateboarder Christian Hosoi. Joel saw a retweet I sent out about his article and wanted to know how to use social media to drive people to his articles. After the call, I thought about what we talked about and I realized how much of a mystery social media is to most people. Dave said I should write up a post about this issue. So taking his advice I present to you the basics of social media.
Social Media 101:
1. Be yourself.
2. Talk about relevant things.
3. Give people value for following you.
Okay, that’s pretty much it. A lot of people will try to convince you that there’s a ’science’ behind all of this and it’s much more complicated than I’m making it out be. But those are the people who are trying to keep it mystical. They don’t want you to understand it because if you did they’d be out of a job. Just follow those three things above and you’ll be fine. In fact, the people who are the most successful with social media consistently stick to these principles.
So what’s a big company supposed to do? My answer: Hire someone and tell them to stick to these three principles. Easy as that. And make sure to inject some humanity into your messages. People are tired of canned advertisements. If you engage in social media, talk like a person, not a company pitchman.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:42 am
very good point.
Simplicity is key - to most things really.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
[...] 8/3 – SecretPenguin.com/Matt: Social Media 101 [...]
August 7th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Right on, Matt. People can see through blatant pitches and self-serving promotion. Plus - who wants to pay attention to that? It’s the same reason you subscribe to a magazine or email newsletter or HBO: good content that you find interesting.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Excellent point. So true. Yet unfortunate that so many companies instead opt to spin their “magic-secret-scientific social media approach” as a silver bullet in an attempt to position/sell themselves as expert. And even more shocking how many clients fall for some of those gray, if not, black hat approaches. Someone forwarded an horrific SM pitch they received last week that had my eyes rolling …it was titled “triangulation(TM)” process and touted domination of Google front page SERPs as the result. Lazy, wrong and ticks me off because stuff like that tarnishes the power of social media.
August 14th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Triangulation process? Ugh. It’s amazing what people will come up with. Unfortunately, people who don’t understand how simple SM really is will fall for this stuff. I think those of us who understand SM need to be more vocal and explain it to our clients every chance we get.