Online Networks Are Not an Island

I had some one recently come to me to discuss their utter disappointment in the use of social media. Their efforts to market their message and share their ideas hit a wall and they felt that they were not acquiring the audience they required. On the surface they appeared to be doing everything right. Their profiles were robust with useful information, their attempts at engagement were interesting with a mixed use of video, typed messages, and photos. Event their avatars were not the typical company logo or headshot, but in the end they were ready to toss in the towel, frustrated, thinking that social media was an area that their company was not fit for.

As a practitioner, I'm always disheartened when I hear people bad mouth social media due to their bad experiences. More often than not it's not the medium that is at fault, but rather in how it's used, but that's harder to explain to someone then most would think. Think about it, how often do you want to be told "you're doing it wrong"?

Linked Network Strategy

Failed social media efforts can be frustrating.

When I look at social networks, and most practitioners will agree, they are merely extensions of what you are. Whether you're selling products or offering services, social profiles are just an extension of engagement, and each platform offers unique opportunities for you to engage with your followers in interesting ways.

What I am seeing more often is profiles such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and a number of others all displaying the same information. Using tools like Ping.fm or some of the third party tools where you can multi-message across all your platforms, users are simply blasting the same information and not understanding the platforms purpose and strengths. This is not to say that you can never use a multi-message network, but like anything else, a time and a place.

I always advise clients that supporters need to be given a reason to follow you on multiple platforms. If they get the same information no matter where they are following you, then there's little reason for them to follow you in more than one or two places. This is counter productive to growing your community and fan base because at some point you will level out and engagement may not be what is expected. If numbers are what is important to the overall goal, than those will also level out and their may be a disproportinate amount on one network compared to the others.

The point in all this being, is give people a reason to follow you based on the strength of the network. Is your company providing strategy for each network or have you achieved little since you started building your presence online?

Photo Credit AdamNF