Back in May, when Social Media was something I was still getting used to, something pretty spectacular happened. I had seen a post by Chris Brogan about using the buffalo (in other words, using as many pieces and parts of a thing as you can), and I thought it would be interesting to tie the essence of his post to something from my world – integrated marketing. So, I wrote a post called Linking the Tactics. Using the Buffalo. A little later in the day, I started noticing that 7 new people were following me on Twitter. Given that I had about 57 total followers, this was quite unusual. I finally figured out that Chris Brogan had retweeted my post. I got a couple of really nice comments on my post (which was two more than I had gotten on most posts I’d written up to that point).
“Wow,” I thought. “I’ve finally made it.”
Something interesting happened though. I wrote another post, and once again I didn’t get any comments. I tweeted and once again, there weren’t any people who seemed to want to respond to me.
In short, I had been given some fish, but I still didn’t know how to catch fish for myself.
If someone’s carrying you, you don’t know if you can walk
If I sound unappreciative, that is not at all my intent. When someone you respect, someone who has forged a name for themselves in this space, recognizes something you have said or done, it’s a great honor. And yes, the probability of your name being seen by people who may not have seen your name otherwise – pretty high.
That being said, do I think people should aim for being tweeted to or retweeted by influencers in the Social Media space? No.
The thing is, when you get new followers or lots of traffic because an influential person takes notice of you, what you are really seeing is a reflection of the influential person’s power and community. People will click the link. They might read your post. However, most people will not feel obligated to comment on a post that they are seeing because of an influential person, at least from what I have seen in my experience and the experience of others. Your community is not often going to grow a lot from these experiences.
To grow your community, you need to be the core of the engagement. People need to react to you because they want to on their own. That is what will inspire them to come back, and that is what will inspire you to go back to other peoples’ blogs or twitter streams.
Influencers and Community Building
So let’s throw all of the influential people away because we clearly don’t need them! Yeahhhh!!!
No. That’s not going to work either. In fact, influential people can be keys to helping build community in the way I discussed in part one of this series. Here’s how.
Visit their communities: One thing we all know about the big names in the Social Media space – they tend to get lots of comments on their blog posts, and many actually take the time to try to respond. A community exists there, and it’s free to join. I have had some great conversations by replying to other commenters while visiting someone’s blog. Of course it’s nice to comment on the post too, but interact with other people who are there. And don’t just send people links to your blog posts. Just talk. Discuss. Engage.
Pass on what you learn: The people who have made it big in this space did so through hard work and innovation. Fortunately for new people like me, they are generally willing to pass on a lot of information that they have gathered over the years. Pass on this information as you learn it, not to try to attract that person’s attention, but to become a slightly more accessible resource for people in your community. Add your own spin to it. Your own “sauce,” if you will. Don’t steal. Always credit. But serve as a conduit between your community and the people you learn from.
Take recommendations to heart: If an influential person does tweet out someone’s post, even (or especially) if you don’t know that person, give their blog a visit. Leave a comment. If he or she is being presented to the influential person’s community, you can take a bet that the content is going to be pretty good on a regular basis. Influential people didn’t get to where they are because they recommended a lot of spam bots. Their reputation depends on introducing good people to their existing community. You are receiving trails of breadcrumbs that lead to great people. Engage!
Remember that influential people are people: Someone who has 500,000 followers or 2 million gazillion Facebook friends may seem inaccessible a lot of the time, and sometimes this far away feeling can lead to unkind comments or impatience from people who perceive that “big names” are too distant, pompous, egotistical, or whatever else. On the other side are people who will try to name drop or do other things that would not be thought sensible in relation to other perhaps less well-known people. How you choose to engage with the “big names” in Social Media tells your community a lot about you. If you only ever name drop, will they feel that you’re interested in engaging with them? If you show impatience or get into fights a lot, will your community find you credible when you talk about respect?
It is and isn’t about you
During #mmchat, when Chris Brogan co-hosted, we talked about cause marketing and how getting just a big name wasn’t really going to help. You need to get people on your team who really want to be there and who believe fully in your cause.
Your Social Media community is the same way. People who have a lot of influence in Social Media can point you in the right direction and provide opportunities for you to meet a lot of great new people, but the decision to engage – that has to be from things you say and do to other people. Your community will consist, in the end, of people who don’t need to see a tweet from anyone but you to act. In a community, you are the influencer, and you are influenced. And that is the heart of Social Media to me.
Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/barunpatro
the decision to engage is not to dissimilar to the decision to hire. The heart of social media is encompassing all of what you bring to the community, what they bring, how you bring it, where you bring it, how effectively you bring it and ultimately gaining the trust and respect for them to look no further but to buy from you. Sounds so cut and dry but we know it is not.
The heart of social media is community as without them there is not much else left other than pushing out a message that people do not want to pay attention to. Right?
Exactly right. What is the point of something like a Facebook page if no one is interacting with you? What is the joy of blogging if you have no one to bounce ideas off of, no one to help you develop your own ideas? It’s really not about becoming “famous” or anything like that. It’s becoming, if you will, “famous” among a small circle of people who will support you just as you support them.
Face it: 100,000 followers’ “decision to engage” may never materialize. It doesn’t invalidate the ideas you want to share. Kafka published only seven short pieces in his lifetime; van Gogh sold only one painting. Even the most prolific bloggers sometimes feel like they’re wasting their time, writing for a world without readers, performing in an empty auditorium, painting pictures nobody wants. The feeling’s understandable. Thank goodness Kafka and van Gogh had passion and perseverence. As van Gogh wrote, “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
Well, I guess what I’m saying is that we don’t need to strive to be Van Gogh or Kafka. Or Mozart. Or anyone else but ourselves. If your emphasis is on trying to become a celebrity, you will crank out the blog posts, readers be darned, right? But if your emphasis is on building a community for yourself, you will find that people will gravitate towards your blog of their own volition. It no longer becomes a matter of you begging people to read your latest masterpiece. People want to visit your blog for the same reason friends want to visit each other in their homes. It’s a chance to discuss things in more than 140 characters. It’s a chance to debate and converse with like-minded people, and thus, your community grows.
Margie, I so agree with this. It’s a big high when someone who’s “it” notices you, that old Sally Fields moment, “They like me!” but it doesn’t come close to feeling like something you can count on. I look to the social media world to build relationships. And my goal is to make them as “real” as I can. Only in this will I be able to be myself, count on the idea that when I want to talk about something that’s important to me – that others will care, and feel the emotional pay-off of the time spent engaging with others. Your practical points about how to do this mirror my way of engaging. Have to say though, that I’m always disappointed when I post and don’t get a response (no hint there, honest) and that I’ve lost a bit of my “generating deeper relationships” as I’ve found connections that I’m happy with. I tend to be drawn to spaces that I’ve already developed and am having trouble finding the time to explore new ones. Your post has me recommitting!
Never feel bad to say, “Hey Margie, please read this post.” That’s another thing about communities – instead of feeling like you’re the little match girl of blog world begging people to come by and comment, you can actually say (as long as you’re genuine), “Hey, I’d like to share this with you!”
It is easy, very easy, to get into ruts. Community should not be synonymous with clique, and I feel some people go in that direction. The doors work best when they swing open both ways 🙂
Nice piece, Margie. With social media, I am always reminded that the key word is to ENGAGE. This is a great reminder to take the time to comment. I also need to take the time *today* to remove as many hurdles as I can in this process, allowing people to engage with me, as well. Thing like, removing the requirement to register for a site in order to do something as simple as comment. Thanks again, & keep the great content coming.
Thanks, Jen. Engagement is a huge part of it, and it’s why the number of followers on Twitter or Klout scores by themselves have never really interested me. I know when I am doing well by my community and when I’m not because they use human language to tell me (and sometimes Morse Code).
Protecting your blog site from spam is a sticky area. Generally, it seems like best practice is to get a spam fighter like Aksimet, which I use here, so that people can comment and see other comments as they happen. If you want to build organic conversation at the core of a community, I think that’ll be a huge help.
Normally I cringe when I see a post about “getting more followers.” Based on what I’ve read from your Tweets I decided to check out your piece anyway. Most social media self help advice gives you the same old skeleton of talking points … but yours didn’t.
Now a lot of the material had been said before, but not in manner like you did it. You fleshed it out. Your insights were, well – nice. Your points were easy to embrace, comfortable, things I’ll remember. Kinda like your hat 😉
Thanks.
Well, thank you! I’m glad you took a chance on me and my post and we both appreciate it 🙂
In essence, this is not necessarily about getting more followers. It may be that 1 person opens the door to a community to you and that’s all you need. For other people, it may take lots of people before that perfectly mixed community is created. It depends on what you’re trying to do, of course.
I’m glad you found this useful AND nice! Double win for me 🙂
Really interesting- and thank you for your writing, Margie. Just tweeted this out (@pdgoldman). But I also wonder about the flip side of this argument. Algorithmically, the way people find new people online in Twitter (and elsewhere) is similar to the formulas dictating how sites show up in search. The more linked you or your site is to those with large traffic/following, the more likely you are to show up… That is to say, I agree with you but, as I’m sure you agree, it’s never either/or
Hi Paula,
Thanks so much, and it’s great to meet you!
I think that meeting people, linking to people, and building community are all different things. I also think that if you go out to create community beyond the “4 walls” of your own site or blog, your chances of becoming seen and recognized are a lot better. For example, if you get a post published at problogger, you will get huge amounts of exposure because that site is so huge and so well known. However, is that really you building a community, or is that just a lot of eyes seeing your post because you are on a trusted site? Will those people come back to see what you’re doing on your own blog? Some may, but I would bet a lot of money that most wouldn’t. Your content is at a site they already go to.
Is that a bad thing? If you are building community, it’s a great way to network out and meet new people. Respond to the comments you get there. Talk to people who retweet the post on Twitter. Wrap those people into your community so that they stick with you.
Make sense?
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