Enhance your Social Media Presence and Get Found for your needs. This is easily said than done.
There are hundreds of successful stories of how individuals and organizations have leveraged Social Media, enhanced their social media presence, and eventually got found for their needs.
The objective of this post to present the actual aspects that enhance your social media presence and a realistic effort required to leverage and implement social media successfully as an individual and as an organization.
There are three critical factors that determine your social media experience irrespective of platforms
What are the precautions that you may want to take before setting up your identity?
Great care has to be taken before setting up your identity. The identity is the foundation of your experience in social media and is a reflection of your needs. Most importantly, it must address and articulate, why you are present in social media(take into consideration both your present and future needs). This will not only determine the traffic coming to your profile but also will determine your strategy to nurture your network.
Creating an identity may be a largely one time exercise and may require some changes from time to time. Ideally, the Identity of an organization in social media platforms, where there are detailed provisions available, like LinkedIn, must be a mirror reflection of the competencies of your organization, showcased in your website. This could be very helpful in showcasing your services and sharing with the network that you construct.
Before you decide to construct a network in any social media platform, please take pains to understand how the network works in specific social media platforms. As an example, In LinkedIn, the network is configured as “Levels”(L1, L2 and L3) and in Twitter it is configured as “Followers” and “Following”. The network works in different ways. In LinkedIn, Search is a function of your network and search results are constrained by the size of your network. The Broadcasts that you therefore make, will be constrained by the size of the network. Similarly in Twitter, the broadcasts that you make will be constrained by your network, in addition to the hash tags that you decide to exercise.
Nurturing your network is a continuous activity. Great Care must be taken to nurture the network, proactively, taking the needs and interdependence into account. Your network is your net worth. Hence great care must be taken to organize your network and there must be a conscious effort to understand the distribution of your network and become conscious of your wealth of connections. It is also possible to scientifically arrive at the size of the network based on your needs. But while constructing the size, the quality of network cannot be compromised.
As the needs of the individual and organizations evolve, the network on your social media platform evolves, and therefore the engagement with your network needs to keep on evolving. While engaging with your evolving network, you need to develop the virtues of listening. As much as you take pains to articulate your identity and therefore your needs, you must also constantly listen to the needs of your network and your engagement strategy has to be a function of your network’s needs. You need to respond to them either in the moment or wait for the moment. You must anticipate trends and must be accordingly be prepared. The heart of the engagement strategy is the content management strategy. Not only is it important to develop content, promoting the content is equally important.
Like nurturing a network, engagement is a continuous activity, required as long as the individual and/or the organization wants to leverage social media.
Since there is a clearly cut out task, it is imperative that every individual who either uses it for his individual purpose or organizational purpose must develop a daily regimen and get into a rhythm. Only then can the individual hope to leverage social media effectively.
There are hundreds of successful stories of how individuals and organizations have leveraged Social Media, enhanced their social media presence, and eventually got found for their needs.
The objective of this post to present the actual aspects that enhance your social media presence and a realistic effort required to leverage and implement social media successfully as an individual and as an organization.
There are three critical factors that determine your social media experience irrespective of platforms
- Identity
- Network
- Engagement
Identity
Identity, the social media profile, like the LinkedIn profile or the Facebook profile represents the identity of an individual. The company page, like the LinkedIn company page or the Facebook company page, represents that identity of an organization.
What are the precautions that you may want to take before setting up your identity?
Great care has to be taken before setting up your identity. The identity is the foundation of your experience in social media and is a reflection of your needs. Most importantly, it must address and articulate, why you are present in social media(take into consideration both your present and future needs). This will not only determine the traffic coming to your profile but also will determine your strategy to nurture your network.
Creating an identity may be a largely one time exercise and may require some changes from time to time. Ideally, the Identity of an organization in social media platforms, where there are detailed provisions available, like LinkedIn, must be a mirror reflection of the competencies of your organization, showcased in your website. This could be very helpful in showcasing your services and sharing with the network that you construct.
Network
Having articulated your needs well, the next most important step is to proactively nurture a qualitative and quantitative network for your needs. The quality and quantity of your network will determine your social media experience. It is simply not possible to connect with everybody on a social media platform. The strategy to nurture a network must therefore be to connect with people who have similar interests, who may need you and/or with whom there is a sense of interdependence, either in the present or in the future.
Before you decide to construct a network in any social media platform, please take pains to understand how the network works in specific social media platforms. As an example, In LinkedIn, the network is configured as “Levels”(L1, L2 and L3) and in Twitter it is configured as “Followers” and “Following”. The network works in different ways. In LinkedIn, Search is a function of your network and search results are constrained by the size of your network. The Broadcasts that you therefore make, will be constrained by the size of the network. Similarly in Twitter, the broadcasts that you make will be constrained by your network, in addition to the hash tags that you decide to exercise.
Nurturing your network is a continuous activity. Great Care must be taken to nurture the network, proactively, taking the needs and interdependence into account. Your network is your net worth. Hence great care must be taken to organize your network and there must be a conscious effort to understand the distribution of your network and become conscious of your wealth of connections. It is also possible to scientifically arrive at the size of the network based on your needs. But while constructing the size, the quality of network cannot be compromised.
Engagement
While you could have a great identity and a great Network, it is the quality, consistency and regularity of your engagement that will impact your social media presence, enhance your reputation and help you to convert your connections into relationships.
As the needs of the individual and organizations evolve, the network on your social media platform evolves, and therefore the engagement with your network needs to keep on evolving. While engaging with your evolving network, you need to develop the virtues of listening. As much as you take pains to articulate your identity and therefore your needs, you must also constantly listen to the needs of your network and your engagement strategy has to be a function of your network’s needs. You need to respond to them either in the moment or wait for the moment. You must anticipate trends and must be accordingly be prepared. The heart of the engagement strategy is the content management strategy. Not only is it important to develop content, promoting the content is equally important.
Like nurturing a network, engagement is a continuous activity, required as long as the individual and/or the organization wants to leverage social media.
The importance of the regimen
The principles of social media for an individual and organization do not differ much. Based on the needs, a relevant identity, network and engagement has to be arrived at. While constructing the identity is one time task, nurturing a network and engaging them effectively is a continuous activity.Since there is a clearly cut out task, it is imperative that every individual who either uses it for his individual purpose or organizational purpose must develop a daily regimen and get into a rhythm. Only then can the individual hope to leverage social media effectively.
Social Media Implementation: Vital steps
- Articulate your holistic business needs and why you want to be in Social Media and arrive at your social media Goals.
- Asses your existing Social Media Presence if any and evaluate the gap
- Assess competitive landscape on Social Media
- Assess the Risks involved, and arrive at mechanisms to handle adverse events.
- Understand the quality and quantity of your network for your needs and arrive at a strategy to network.
- Understand the Engagement required for your network, arrive at a content strategy and more importantly promote it regularly.
- Based on the network and the engagement required arrive at the effort required to sustain this effort and therefore an organization required to support this initiative.
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