Blog by Julian Summerhayes. 317 words.
There is no shortage of advice on social media.
With so many platforms to choose from it is practically an industry in itself.
But it causes chaos.
Or at least chaotic thinking.
You build one platform after another. And the pressure to make it work just drives you to spend more and more time. You might have noticed lately that your results appear in inverse proportion to the effort.
More does not beget more.
The ingredient that is missing is multiplication. The power of ‘X’.
Social media will not scale, irrespective of the strength of the endeavour, unless you have people to develop and expand your message beyond your immediate connections. Call them your walking ambassadors or raving fans – it amounts to the same thing. You might counter this with remarkable content but so little of it is engaging, interesting or worth spreading. Even when you find a simmering of interest it doesn’t last.
As I commented on the other day (which a number people agreed with), people don’t engage with brands in the same way as a person. Yes, you like your brand but social media tribes don’t. An easy win perhaps.
One paradigm that remains available to counter this lacuna is to focus on the power of free or perhaps less jarring is to adopt a giving mindset. Telling me about the latest release without more isn’t going to get me to remark to others. Give me something valuable or with strong emotional connection and that might be just enough to turn me on to your offering.
Nothing that you own is so precious that you cannot give a taste of the offering.
You might have a size-able number of connections and be seduced by the E=MC2 power of the network but when was the last time you caused a breakthrough to second or third level connections? That is where social media gets interesting.