My Twitter stream is so bad that I barely check it anymore. It’s been overrun by companies with no social media strategy – they just think it’s another place to throw a free advertisement.
As a result, I’ve been cutting down the number of people I’m following in half… and will continue trimming it down until it’s both meaningful and manageable. (I’ll apologize ahead of time that if some of you have been cut off the list, you may have been caught in some unfollow logic I’m testing. I can’t simply hand curate 30,000 folks!)
Facebook and Google have filtering mechanisms that, in my opinion, overfilter and I seem to miss out of many communications that I’m interested in. Just because your status update doesn’t have people liking or commenting doesn’t mean I’m not interested… but Facebook and Google have made that decision on my behalf. So even though the SPAM is gone, so are the little gems that I used to love discovering.
LinkedIn has grown beyond an effective business to business resource and is starting to become a huge SPAM farm overgrown with people dominating the forums and throwing more and more irrelevant crap out there.
The noise in social media has exceeded its usefulness in many ways. I’ve actually reverted back to checking my RSS feeds in Google Reader and continue to use sites like StumbleUpon to discover new sites of interest.
I’m not listening to your company on social media anymore because your social media strategy sucks.
The problem is not the volume of social media, though. The problem is the quality of the content within social media. Companies haven’t developed a social media strategy, they’ve developed SPAM methodologies to simply vomit their sales crap through social media channels. That’s not a strategy. It’s not working. And it’s ruining social media.
Most companies fail at social media because they start by defining who they are, what they’re going to sell, where they’re going to sell it, and how they’re going to sell more of it. That’s an advertising strategy, not a social media strategy. If you’re trying to put a pitch together in 140 characters or less, you’re on the wrong track.
A social media strategy starts with two simple questions:
- Where is my audience?
- How can I help them?
Whether it’s our email newsletter (subscribe above), our videos, our podcast, our blog, our Twitter account, LinkedIn or our Facebook page, our focus is on adding value to our audience… you! By focusing our attention on you, our social media strategy has developed over time and grown a great business, DK New Media.
A successful social media strategy works this way:
- We provide you value.
- We build authority in the industry.
- You help to promote us by liking, following, tweeting and stumbling us.
- We build a larger audience.
- We share all our secrets. (DIY folks will always do it themselves)
- We offer our assistance to our audience if they need a hand.
- Companies who need help reach out and ask for it.
Did you see anything in there about sales and advertising? I hope not!
How do you measure success with your social media strategy? Awareness of your company increases, your authority in the spaces is recognized by others, you continue to grow a strong following with a relevant audience… and ultimately… you sell more to more. Success in business always comes down to dollars and cents, but first you have to build your authority and your following… the money follows that.
NOTE: At times, we do share offers from a sponsor or an affiliate (aka.. an advertisement) – but we’re still absolutely careful that it must be something that can add value to our audience. That’s a social media strategy.
