I want to talk about social media. More precisely, your social media. The question I have to ask is, why does anybody care what you have to say on social media anymore? And the real question is, do they? Well, yeah, they do. Well, some people do and some people don't. The ones who identify with your point of view are paying attention. The ones who don't are still paying attention, but may not be engaged. The current topics in the new are creating a divisiveness that I have never seen before and that is diluting our ability to get messages, or be seen, heard, engaged with, and shared!
Oh… Are They Listening?
So let's talk about that a little bit. Like-minded people tend to listen to each other, especially in these polarizing times where the news cycle is happening so fast. There's so much stuff being posted on the internet. I've seen the same post shared over, and over, and over again. They make different points. Some of them are pro this, some are anti that. It's all over the place, but the bottom line is that what you end up with is a bunch of people who either agree with your point-of-view or disagree with your point-of-view.
That can have an effect on whether people are engaging with the content that you post. Now, that can be true on any social media platform: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, it does not matter. But, there's an opportunity here. There's an opportunity for you to become a thought leader. It's not necessarily with what you say on diverse topics that may be in the news. It's more about how can you help people come together and start agreeing.
Oprah Effect
I watched this 60 Minutes interview, and I watched both parts. It's with Oprah. Yes, Oprah's on 60 Minutes. Like her, hate her, whatever, but she brought together a bunch of people that were in different political camps. There were 14 of them, seven on one side, seven on the other side. The first time they came together, they basically went head to head. But in the second interview, she actually talked to them again months later. What happened was that those people became friends. They would sit down and eat meals together. They created a closed Facebook group and would continue the conversations. It got so heated sometimes that they almost all quit.
But the bottom line is, that group stuck together and kept discussing issues, trying to find some kind of common ground, some like-mindedness. That's hard to do today, especially in this divisive world. I have certain friends on Facebook, that all they do is post something to get your blood to boil. They want you to basically bite at that poison apple that they're putting out there because they want to watch you squirm. They love that! Somebody could post anything, and all the sudden you get these opposing views.
Another guy said the exact same thing. He said, “You know, I don't necessarily agree with this anyways, but I got you guys all up in a lather. It was great, it was fun.” Okay, well, you know, what's the purpose of all that stuff, right? The key thing is that if you're doing this from a business standpoint, you cannot basically ignore the fact that there's a bunch of people out there that are not doing it from a business standpoint. I don't care if it's on Facebook, LinkedIn, or whatever.
Opportunity
So here the opportunity. First and foremost, you can create some positive drips on the internet. Now I do this every single day. I have a quote of the day. The quote of the day ends up getting commented on, shared, liked, so many different times. I'm trying to create a very positive impact on the people that pay attention to what I do. That helps a lot.
Now you can do a whole bunch of different things. You can share other people's posts. You can find them or create them yourself. I just an app on my phone. It's called Quotlr. There's Word Swag, and there are others. You can find great, positive quotes and put those out there. That's something that you can do. You can find cat videos, dog videos, all that kind of stuff. You can find funny things and share them. One of my friends has a pun of the day. They're bad, but it's fun. It's something that people engage with that is not on this divisive train that everybody seems to be on.
The key thing that you want to do is get people's attention, and inspire them with positive information that way. When you post other stuff, people will pay attention in the right way. So whether you like it or not, people are watching what you're doing. But the ones that agree with your point of view are going to engage more unless you get a bunch of people that are trolling just looking to pick a fight. Especially when you pull out divisive topics.
Original ‘Thought Leader' Content
So here's the last thing that you can do, the best thing that you can do, and the most important thing you can do. That is post original content. One of my friends posted an opinion piece. It was so well-written and basically talked about what we're talking about today. He's a writer friend who actually works with me, helping me write content for websites, and he does a great job. But he basically came in and said, “Can we find some middle ground?” That post was liked and shared so much, and it was a long form piece. He got an incredible response on that.
Now, what I mean by long form is something that's about 1,000 to 1,200 words. Yes, you can put a 1,000 to 1,300 words inside of Facebook. LinkedIn limits you to 1,300 words. That would be including links, and also images. You've gotta be careful and take a look at it. So one of the tips that I've learned is if you're going to write a long form post, do it in LinkedIn first. Then see that it matches that size, and then you can copy and paste it and put it into other social media.
This writer friend who's part of my mastermind actually learned this from me, and I learned it from somebody else who's going to be a future guest. I've written these long form, basically mini training articles that are very positive. They have got an incredible response. So the key thing that I do is I put in a tagline or something at the beginning that's a little bit controversial, that really gets the juices flowing. One of them, I actually said, “I've been doing social media for 14 years and I found it to be a complete waste of time.” Then I went on to explain how it should not be, and how you could use it where it's successful and useful.
That got people's juices flowing and then I put in an image in there that kind of matched that expectation. The amount of engagement I've gotten on Facebook and LinkedIn was off the charts, compared to everything else I did. I got a lot of people commenting on it, and here is the key. Because of one of those posts, one of my friends saw it on LinkedIn, and she sent me a message and said, “Hey, can we talk? I want to use your books as something that I can train my staff with.” She happens to have hundreds of people on her staff, which means that there's a potential from one post that I could sell hundreds of books.
It was the positive nature and education value of what I posted that really got her to engage and then think, “You know what? I want to utilize this guy's knowledge. He's a thought leader.”
Final Thoughts
So here are three things to think about. People may be paying attention, but they may not necessarily agree and may not engage with you when you're posting things. Number two, protect your brand. Don't post divisive things. Do your best to avoid it, because all it's going to do is get half of your audience lathered up, and there's a good chance you could lose some business from that. The third one is to be a thought leader. Have original thoughts, write your own stuff and post it to social media in a way that's going to get people to engage with you.
I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on your challenges with communicating about your business in this new online environment. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas or questions about showing the concepts presented. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?
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