It’s Not Called Social Media for Nothing

No matter what social media platform you use, there is one mistake you can make that will make you disappear fast than you can click your mouse, and chances are you are making it.  In a word, that mistake is self-indulgence.

Most users of any social media platform are kind of like content factories, just churning out posts, tweets, pictures, videos, links, and updates and shipping them out to everyone on their friend and follower lists.  Whether Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, or any other platform, these users will be disconnected from the network and will never be truly integrated into it until they learn a fundamental truth about social media: it’s about being social.

While this might sound like a glib insight masquerading as a profound one, many users don’t think about the implications of the phrase “social network” and are disappointed when their content is ignored.

Social networks operate on the same principle that live networks do: interactivity.  If you have a friend in real life who does nothing but ramble on about his or her accomplishments, problems, or anything else without letting you have a word, you probably will avoid that person when you can.  The same is true online.  Just because your communication online seems one-way doesn’t mean that it is.

It takes work to approximate the immediate interactivity of face-to-face exchange, but it is possible—and not only possible, it is necessary.  The idea is simple: if you want people to pay attention to you, you have to pay attention to them.  Constantly unloading content at an audience alienates them and cheapens the interaction.  You might as well be talking to a wall.

People won’t care about you and your original content unless they feel like you care about them and theirs.  This is a fact.  (Unless your target audience is bots; in which case, do whatever you want.)  The question, then, is how to go about interacting.

The answer is simple enough: Pay attention to your network the way you would want them to pay attention to yours.  If you aren’t getting enough views or comments on your page, blog, site, or enough followers of your Twitter account, it’s probably because you aren’t viewing and commenting on other people’s pages, aren’t following other tweeters, and generally aren’t keeping up your end of the deal.

It doesn’t take much to be seen as a presence online—making a few specific comments in many cases is enough.  But if you don’t make at least some effort, you’ll watch as your popularity shrinks.  It’s all about the Golden Rule: do unto others … well, you know the rest.