How in tune are you with your senses? Every day we are bombarded with so many messages and media distractions that its possible for our senses to become dull. So many marketing strategies and sales actions are placed on autopilot that we keep responding to the same stimuli and doing the same things over and over regardless of the marketing platform we’re using.
If you’re looking to achieve success in social media then you need to heighten your senses. Expand your vision, sharpen your hearing and sensitize your ability to feel. Social media today is part science and part art. The science portion is not difficult to master. It requires us to look at the data of what is happening in social media. There are a lot of tools for measuring you and your fans/followers activities on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and others.
The artistic part of social media is knowing how to apply the data so that you meet your social media goals. Ponder this example. Your data from Twitter reveals that you have the most followers online and retweeting during the hours of 3pm – 4pm. So you schedule your juiciest content to go out during the 3-4pm hour focused on reaching the most people who can spread your content. On the surface that looks like a good strategy. However, the data may not provide the full story. You know when you have the most followers online but are these the followers you want to influence? You may discover that even through you have the largest amount of followers online in the PM, the group of followers you want to influence is on Twitter in the AM.
Developing your social media senses requires that you look deeply into the data and see where taking action is in alignment with your social media goals. You will need to develop your sense of sight to see into the data you accumulate to make decisions that will lead you toward your goals. Posting content when the majority of your fans/followers are online should not be the entire strategy. Enhance your focus to posting when you can reach the highest number of people of influence.
Improve your sense of hearing to do more than use keywords to find potential prospects. Use your sense to engage people who have an interest in your industry and provide them good information to change those individuals into Brand Ambassadors who will speak great things about your business. Brand Ambassadors can lead more prospects to your door than keyword listening.
There are other ways you can go beyond the art of reacting to the data and developing a deeper sense of how to achieve your social media goals. My number one suggestion is to trust your instincts and use the Force.