10 Truths About Social Media Success Pt. 1

Photo from Stock.xchang taken by Gabriella Fabbri

I was having a small online discussion with a friend of mine (@hilybee on Twitter) about Twitter in general, but about social media in specific. She’s great and I talk to her about all sorts of stuff. I was commenting on how I had thanked someone for following me on Twitter, and that person sent me a message back. It didn’t say Hi, or How are you, or you’re welcome. Not even, “Screw you, I hate you!” The message back was “Come to my website and see my music and blah blah blah blah.” My exact quote was, “they should stop calling this social media, and just call it media.”

Don’t get me wrong, I get it. I don’t always have something personal to say. Sometimes, I just want to let you know that I have a blog post that I just posted.

Everyone wants to make a buck. 

Everyone is reading social media marketing books because they want to be the next social media mogul. But there are some things that you just shouldn’t do. If you ever want to have any kind of success on social media, you’re followers on Twitter want you to obey the rules, even the unwritten ones.

I’ve been thinking about this juggernaut called social media for a while and have developed some principles for the way that I want to operate on Facebook and Twitter…and well…anywhere else. They are ten principles that I like to call the Ten Truths about Social Media Success. I hope they help you.

Truth #1  People love to talk about themselves, but hate when others do the same thing.

C’mon, we all like to talk about ourselves. Don’t lie. Even you. Yep. You…..and you may be extremely interesting. I don’t want to take away from you the fact that you could be the most interesting person in the world. But if you talk about yourself too much, you can also be the biggest blowhard in the world too. 

Think about the people in your life that you really like. Those people are interesting, but they also think you’re interesting too. You have a lot in common. Want to know how you know that? You know that because you took interest in someone else besides yourself. 

This is a key principle in succeeding in social media.

You must take genuine interest in other people. 

I am not a billboard to advertise your stuff  ( I love that and have to credit HilyBee for that one). I am a person who likes to interact with other people. 

I am not a customer. I am a person who could take an interest in you if you would quit blasting me with how you want me to come to your website and see your thingamajig that you created for a whosit. I don’t care…but I might if you just talked to me a bit. I just might then. I might even care enough to tell others about you. I can be a very good customer. 

This has been a long time for me. I realized that people are people. We all want people to understand us. We all want people to care about what we want and care about. We want people to care about US. When I first started this little blogging adventure, I wrote about this. You can see that here. Harlan Coben truly made me feel like I matter. I read his books voraciously, partly because he knows how to ratchet up the tension, and partly because he was such a nice guy to me.

As another example, I stopped reading John Locke’s books because he never answers to me when I engage him and he lied about how he got where he is. I read the book on how he says he got to where he is. It isn’t true. He doesn’t seem interested in the people that love his books, except for how they can help him to get farther.

Be more interested in people. 

We become more interested in people when they become interested in us.

So what do you think about this? Has social media become less social or is it just me? Let me know what you think and stay tuned  for another installment in the 10 truths series.