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Tash
Building your social media profile the nice way
In my latest newsletter, on Facebook and Twitter, I have mentioned some great advice I heard from Gihan Perera in a webinar a couple of weeks ago. Namely,
do something nice for someone on social media every day.
Such a simple concept with the potential benefit of making people feel good and remembering your positively, and giving you inspiration to maintain your social media presence (without being a sales pitch). It also makes you feel good, expands your creativity and shows your generosity.
Not sure of how to do this?
Nice social media activities
Here is a list of things I have thought of, but I’m sure you could add more to this list…
- retweet interesting tweets
- leave comments on blog posts you read (hint hint!)
- answer questions on LinkedIn, even if its just your opinion rather than your expertise
- give someone an online testimonial (LinkedIn is great for that, but why not try Facebook, twitter, Tumblr or their own website? Or maybe compliment them in many places!
- answer questions in a forum
- share the link to a great blog post or article
- write a blog post and link back to someone else’s blog or social media profile
- if you see an opportunity to promote someone, do it (for example, if a relevant site accepts recommendations or links, suggest someone else)
- give support to someone in a forum
- ‘pin’ someone’s image or infographic
- introduce people in your networks (via email or through platforms like Facebook and Twitter)
- add a comment or favourite a YouTube video or a Slide Share presentation
- share a random link with your social media audience – show support for a charity, a good resource or someone who needs a boost
- forward an enewsletter to someone who would appreciate it
I’ve created a pdf of these ideas but I will update it next week when I have more ideas added to the list – share your ideas as a comment and I’ll include your name with your ideas.
Any company that isn’t understanding the benefit of social media marketing will be left behind in the dust! SO any tips that help people build a profile is good although I prefer something less labour intensive than your method here.
Thanks for leaving a comment Gerry. Social media is important and I agree that businesses need to understand its importance and assess if its relevant in their business – it still isn’t necssary for all businesses in my opinion.
I wouldn’t say doing nice things every day alone will build you a strong social media presence, but added to other online activities it will give you a good reputation and build relationships plus I see value in just helping people. To me, social media is about being social and interacting with people so it must be labour intensive to be effective – it is this massive time requirement that stops many businesses from taking up social media (fully or at all).
One thing that I feel works good to tighten the bonds between organizations from the same field who are present on Facebook is to Share (or re-post) interesting status updates that they might have. Did they feature an interesting story, image or blog post on their Facebook page? Why not Share that with your network and help them get more coverage? I noticed that over time, other organizations become fan of your page and might return the favor.
Sharing facebook status updates is defintely a good way to build your profile – and I like that you are encouraging sharing ‘competitors’ information as I believe we can work together rather than ‘fight’ for business.