Tweet a random thought, maybe some followers get a laugh, a chuckle. Maybe they react, sure. But what’s the point?
Lately, I’ve made a change in the way I approach social media. Starting with its purpose, and ending with the frequency with which I post, I re-evaluated everything. What I came up with could be centered around two words: VALUE, and AUTHENTICITY.
VALUE
Why post, tweet, share anything if I can’t explain the value it brings to my followers? If a tweet doesn’t provide any value, then why tweet it?
Those are questions I’ve been trying to ask myself before clicking “tweet”. Now, value could be defined in different ways. I tweeted a question about ongoing coaching searches:
Where was the value in tweeting a question? The VALUE surfaced in some of the responses, which helped me to see things in a different way.
I learned something.
In all, my posts across all social channels are starting to shift more towards providing (or uncovering) some value for my followers, and I’ve seen a noticeable difference in the types of interactions each day.
AUTHENTICITY
There’s so much fake. On instagram, facebook, twitter, everywhere you look you can’t avoid duck-lip selfies with a little skin-smoothing applied to a cartoonish extent (that’s an extreme example).
For my purpose on social - providing value & brand building - ANYTHING that comes across as disingenuous from me is counter productive. It’s a major turn-off, I believe, for my followers.
This focus on authenticity has lead to less posts (especially video posts) with focus on production value, and MORE posts that are SIMPLE, QUICK, and HONEST.
On instagram, for instance, just taking this approach for one week has lead to an uptick in the number of followers on that platform.
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Now, knowing what to do, and actually following through are two different things. I’m sure I’ll skew from the VALUE/AUTHENTICITY objective from time to time, and will have to reel myself back in. But the goal is the goal: provide value to you, and be real.
VALUE: inspiration, encouragement, wisdom, information, humor, money-saving, free stuff.
AUTHENTICITY: short, original, simple production, behind the scenes, engage more, #nofilter
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.
mw