This is directed at you — the laggers who are likely NOT reading this blog among my colleagues (who shall remain nameless) who are creeping along outside the action like a voyeur.
I hit a wall this week with the umpteenth public relations and/or marketing peer not engaging in social media with the basics of basics – Twitter. Then there was a fabulous new company launch with a highly creative site from an old colleague with whom I was eager to tweet. Sadly, his last tweet was 20 days ago.
Are you engaging for real, people? C’mon, don’t kid yourself…we both know you’re not.
From a seriously real cross section of colleagues, peers, practitioners of all ages and experience ranges, who are experts in their own right with budding businesses, etc., the writing is on the wall. Marketing and public relations are NOT engaging in social media, and that’s a SAD state of affairs.
SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT GOING AWAY! SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT A TREND! (Yep, caps on purpose; felt better than boldface.)
I’m here to push you off your derrière and raise your bar. How can you ignore something so incredibly exciting for marketing public relations when clients and employers expect you to be the expert who leads them to social media opportunity?
I own a virtual public relations agency, Soulati Media, Inc. I can’t find anyone yet (within the confines of my circular engagement) who knows more than me in social media. Why’s that? Because I’ve been busting my chops for the last three years to learn, engage, test, fail, test, and become knowledgeable. (See that “fail” word in there? Painfully, it has to happen to become learned, and then the doors swing open and shut more smoothly.)
This is not about blogging, either. It’s simply about carpe diem. There’s gold in them ‘thar hills, people, and if you don’t go mining, you’re never going to get your social media mojo.
Here are Jayme Soulati’s 10 Basic Social Media Engagement Tips:
1. Launch a Twitter account associated with business. Brand yourself as an expert, but first believe you are one.
2. Expect to fail (failure comes in many sizes) and embrace the pain as learning anything new. You will get through that episode (spoken from my own trial and error).
3. Re-launch the Facebook account you closed down because you couldn’t handle connecting with high school alumni. Consider it a business venture and make it so with a fan page to fuel your business or expertise.
4. Adopt a mentor, but don’t suck them dry! Be respectful of their time and their own hard-earned pathway to knowledge.
5. Engage, people, really engage. That means post a comment on a blog with your perspective. Make yourself known to the blogger you’re reading who has no idea you exist. Communication is a two-way street.
6. Understand fear and get beyond it. Your fear may be lack of confidence in your own expertise. Get out of your own way, and just do it already.
7. Tackle one new thing every day. This is as easy as tweet five times. Follow five people. Post one comment on a new blog every day. RT someone’s blog post. Explore a new social media application everyone else is so you’re in the know, too.
8. Don’t get left behind! I’ve been tweeting for maybe 15 months now, and it’s the sole reason I’ve met the cool people who are now my new colleagues and friends. It saved me days of boredom through the dark winter because social media takes you to Bali, Singapore, Australia, and South America where peers there seek engagement, too.
9. Set a goal. While I’ve never written goals, they are in my head. Yesterday I had the same number of followers and following on Twitter, 1817. Because I compete, I want to get to 2000, but it’s getting tougher to create a Twitter stream that’s not littered with spammers, scammers, and salespeople. So, I’ll go for quality over quantity. Don’t let the numbers fool you.
10. Ask for help. I don’t know what I don’t know, but I’m glad to help you get there, too. Post your little question down below, and we’ll journey.
Got social media? Please say “yes!”
