Social media is a great way to promote yourself and your business – fact. Openness is the cornerstone of the social media world and sometimes this is a difficult concept to grasp. So why is it important and why is there a difficulty to understand this concept?
Why is ‘social openness’ important?
It is all based on the law of attraction. Which is more powerful and believable – someone telling you how good they are or someone showing you that they are knowledgeable and an expert in their chosen field? We are all steeped in the historical ‘broadcast marketing’ – shouting at the top of your voice what you do and how good you are, sometimes including well articulated benefits. When this approach is executed in a social environment it has proved to provide very limited results as Social is interactive and conversational and this approach is one way traffic where people cannot engage.
In a social world the aim is to attract a following (a likeminded ‘tribe’ in Seth Godin terminology). To gain a following you need to be ‘attractive’ in some way. The most effective strategy is to becoming attractive is to provide (share) something of value. Not just once but on a continual (relentless) basis. Sharing information, knowledge, understand, interpretation all help to position you / your business as experts in your chosen field and thus making you attractive to others. You never know people may even contact you and ask for your product or services!
Why is this ‘openness’ a difficult concept to grasp?
Well, traditional thinking goes along the lines that a person’s knowledge is his / her power, it is the crown jewels, it’s what people pay for. As such it is something to protect, keep hidden and not shared. This ‘closed’ approach does not work well in a social environment for the reasons outlined above, however many people find it very challenging to share openly and see what happens. It is a difficult shift in mindset as the outcomes are not guaranteed or rather you do not know where they will lead.
In a social world people keep a watching brief, they monitor and track you and your business. We have had many occasions at BeSeen Marketing where people have said “I have been following you on Twitter for a while and think we should talk”. How great would you feel if you received a phone call or email that started like this?
What to Share?
I am not proposing that you give away all your inner secrets, however sharing some important insights and knowledge is vital if you are to succeed in a social world. So we are starting a hash tag that could help.
#SILT (Something I Learnt Today)
We have come up with a Twitter hash tag (#) that we think may help people to make this leap of faith that sharing is good. How many times in a day do you discover and learn something new, something that you did not know about when the day started? Why not share this new knowledge with others. If you find interesting and useful then you can bet others will too. People may follow you because you share what you learn, they make you a source of knowledge.
#SILT stands for ‘Something I Learnt Today’. With only 140 characters a hash tag of #SomethingILearntToday would take up 22 valuable characters. So we have shortened it to #SILT
Example Tweet:
Just discovered that Microsoft have just changed Hotmail email Addresses to @outlook.com #SILT
I have just seen Augmented Reality where print media collides with Digital media #SILT
Note:
These nuggets of information could be shared (retweeted) thus providing you with more visibility so remember if you want people to Retweet you need to leave enough space for them to add their twitter address to the beginning and still be within the 140 characters.
Start using #SILT
Join in and start to use #SILT in your tweets and take the first step to ‘openness’ in a social world. Have fun and build your Tribe.
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