I have said it before and I am sure I will say it again, but there are a million and one social media sites on the internet and only one of you with 24 hours in your day. Starting a “social media campaign” (a somewhat artificial term as ‘campaign’ suggests something of a finite length and to interact with social media, you need to accept it as an ongoing thing) can be exciting, daunting and overwhelming all at the same time. But, just like starting a blog, before you even begin to create a profile on Twitter or friending people in Digg, it is worth taking some time to determine exactly why you want to get involved in social media.
This list, like the list in the last post is not meant to be a definitive list. What I was hoping to achieve is for you to find yourself resonating with one or the other. I am more concerned about the wrong reasons – if you find yourself agreeing with any of them then you may need to rethink, as any of them can very quickly scupper any social media interaction which you might undertake.
The right reasons for getting involved in social media
- You want to talk to your audience and stakeholders as equals
- You understand the unwritten and written rules of each site and know that those parameters can still work for you.
- You are flexible in your attitude and interested in trying out new forms of communication
- You are interested in listening to what your peers and audience have to say
- You have a lot of stuff to contribute and you want to spend the time to do so.
- You understand the power of networking and are interested in making new connections.
- You understand that social media isn’t the be all and end all of your promotional activities.
- You are willing to put in the time to establish relationships with people
- You have more of a ‘give’ mentality than at ‘take’ mentality
- You have taken the time to identify which sites are going to be the most useful – and enjoyable – for you to be involved in
The wrong reasons for getting involved in social media
- You want to use it to broadcast your stuff or do the hard sell because you think it is an easy and cheap way to advertise.
- You have heard you can ‘game’ the system
- You want to do a few weeks with it but aren’t really interested in maintaining any kind of presence
- You want to pretend you are someone or something else, so you can falsely push yourself or damage a competitor.
- Because everyone else is, so you thought you should, even though you don’t like computers much.
- Because you are looking for an excuse to mess around on the internet (actually, this isn’t a deal breaker because I think everyone has an element of this but if it is your only reason for getting involved, then perhaps use social media for fun rather than pretending to use it for business
) - You aren’t interested in individual conversations, you just want a way to shout about how good you are.
- You plan to automate all of your interactions so you don’t actually have to really get involved (fortunately, this is not always possible)
I love social media and use it for a combination of business and personal (which is fine), but I am also aware of how much of a ‘time sink’ it can be. You can only establish meaningful relationships if you take the time to get involved – consistently and regularly. Social media is not an easy option by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly can be fun. Reassessing your reasons for using it can make the experience all that more helpful.
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