Be a Social Media Giver not a Product Seller
No matter what type of business you’re promoting on social media, the goal is to establish yourself as a subject matter expert in your niche. Even if you have an e-commerce business, your focus should be informing and educating others rather than doing the hard-sell on your products.
Here’s three ways to help your audience out and rack up some Brownie points as a Social Media Giver:
Share Your Own Content
If you haven’t already launched a Business Blog on your website … now’s the time to start. Blog posts are the best way to establish your subject matter expertise in your niche. Your business website is where you “sell” your products or services, and your blog is where you “give”.
Whether that giving is an informative blog post about your industry, a round up of industry information or something smaller like an industry news event or business announcement. Give freely and Give often.
Share Your Research
If like me your love research, you’ll uncover all sorts of interesting blog posts, websites, tools, lists of tips or infographics during your on-line adventure. Share these resource links you find with your followers for a double benefit.
This approach sets you up as a font of knowledge in your niche. It also saves your audience time because the can get a good cross section of content from one source rather than having to curate it from the web themselves.
Share enough valuable content and you become perceived as a resident expert and become the go-to resource for your niche. The key to this approach is to make sure you shorten the URL link and give credit to the source.
Share Social Media Finds
When reviewing your social media news streams, look out for content worth sharing. This could be a share on Facebook, a retweet on Twitter or a Share on Google+. This not only adds credence to your own expertise, but provides you with an opportunity to acknowledge other thought leaders in your niche. You’re providing them with exposure to your audience and helping to support their brand visibility as well.
Careful not to just share content without reading it first. Once you share it, you’re providing a level of validation to the content – almost like a seal of approval. So before you share, make sure you’ve done your due diligence to know what you’re sharing. You don’t have to read it word for word – but you should at least scan the entire piece.
The gift of Social Media
These three simple technique for generating Social Media content will keep your networks fed with a continual stream of interesting content to engage your audience.
The last piece of the puzzle is to monitor your monthly social media metrics to check which type of content is resonating with your audience. Your social media strategy isn’t just about increasing the number of followers you have, it’s about increasing the level of engagement for your content.
When you know what they like and respond too, you know what to give them….. and Being Social is all about Giving.
