Social Media Success Depends on How Human You Are

Social Media is the new trend : everyone wants a piece of it and we all try to market using the social media tools or just to interact with others on common interest subjects. Everyday we read about another guy that has thousands of followers on Twitter or thousands of friends on Facebook; his blog is popular and all he says and writes gets comments by the dozen. You may wonder what is the secret in all this : how do they do it ? The truth is that there is no magic potion or hidden secret : they just act normal.

Social Media Tools to Use

You have to know that social media is represented by a few tools that can be used to market yourself or your business, interact, share informations, links, documents, images and videos. The most common social tool we see on the Internet is the blog. This is a simple content management system very easy to use and setup that makes it possible for everyone of us to publish our work on the Internet. Beside that there are all the websites that offer different ways to interact :

• social networks like Facebook(share informations, images and videos), MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr (share images), YouTube(share videos), Viddler (video sharing)
• microblogging websites like Twitter and Plurk
• social bookmarking website like Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Furl, Stumbleupon, Technorati and many others

Each of these social media tools has it’s own particularities and it’s own targeted users. You’ll see that different social networks have different audience based on age, genre, religion, geographical position. You can use websites like http://www.quantcast.com/ to see all the demographic data and also you can check this pdf on “New Media, New Influencers & Implications for Public Relations” to have a much more complex image on social media.

Choose Your Communication Channels Based on Your Goals

You see that no matter what I write I keep coming back to the same principles that I think should not be overlooked : purpose and goals. Based on your goals you will plan what you are gonna write on your blog. Your goals will also help you to figure out what kind of client do you target with your actions. You can use the informations that can be found on the Internet about demographic statistics to see which of these social websites fit your goals best. You can also look on each social website and see if you can find some informations about advertising there : they’ll usually offer you and some infos on who is using their social network. There are some cases in which taking a decision is not that hard. For example if you are a photographer it makes sense to use Flickr and maybe Facebook. If you want to market products using Youtube or Viddler comes as a common sense and a direct call. Also you should perform searches with the keywords that define your main activity to see what kind of people are talking about this on specific social websites, how they do it and how many friends or followers they have.

If You Want to Succeed BE HUMAN

As I said in the beginning of the article everyday you hear about people that make it on the social media and if you go to their blogs and ask them how they did it they’ll tell you : I was just being myself. Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jim Connolly, Michael Martine, Darren Rowse and many others made it by being them selfs. You should think of your activity in all the social networks like any other physical action. Before you do something, before you post anything or upload an image or a video ask yourself this question : “If this would be in real life and I would have around me all my friends I would say this thing ? Or, I would show them this image or video ?”. BE HUMAN. Don’t talk all the day only about you because very soon you’ll have no one to talk to. No one likes a braggart. Educate yourself to show the same behavior in the virtual world of websites as in the real world. This connection exists for the simple reason that both the social networks and the reality have the same basic principle : socialization between humans. The rules remain the same : only the way we share information changes. Respect your followers and Participate.

Once again : BE HUMAN

Use your qualities and be you. Learn to accept that and to use it for good. Don’t forget that social networks are made by people that interact based on the same rules that apply in real life. If you understand this then you have a chance to achieve the success you desire. We now live in the era of “ME” and “WHAT I HAVE TO SAY”.