Social Media is a Participation Sport

Now what? It’s a simple thing to ask yourself once you’ve signed up on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and probably more. Yeah, what the heck did you get yourself into anyway?

It’s not that bad. Social media is about connecting with your customers, engaging them and building a brand community. I still like to call Facebook’s company pages “Fan Pages” instead of “Like” or “Page” because you have to communicate with your community as if they are fans of your brand. Why do they like you on Facebook, follow you on Twitter, or connect with you on LinkedIn? Because they care about your company and they are a fan.

You’ll notice a lot of great words that I just mentioned including: engaging, connecting, communicating, and community. When thinking about what to post, just think to yourself, “What would our brand community care about?” They want to hear about successes in your company like recent projects, company news like promotions & new hires, as well as changes in your industry. If you don’t participate with your community, they forget about you and move on instead of becoming more attached to your company. Social media as allowed marketers and business developers to connect with clients beyond the conference room and have a “digital golf course” where people do business with people they like and respect.

They want and need you to have a personality. I’ve always said, its not just okay to have a personality, its encouraged, even for B-to-B businesses. For every person you turn away because of your personality, you create a raving fan. What would you rather have 1,000 people that casually like you or 500 people that love you and tell everyone they know about you? That’s the power of social media, a participation sport.