Find your voice
If you feel like you have an idea about the technical aspects of social media but find it still isn’t working for you, perhaps you haven’t found your voice yet. You need to give people a reason to want to come back again and again to see what you have to offer or read what you have to say.
“You get a following if you have some grains of wisdom, whether they be about business in general, like operating tips, all the way to industry tips,” says Pam Springer, president and CEO at Manta Media Inc., a 53-employee company that operates a massive online database for information on small businesses.
“People can say they agree or disagree, but they appreciate insight or comments. A lot of people are starting to see success. They are building their own voice around the capability or competency that they express to an audience. That starts to follow them around as some of these tips and techniques are helpful to individual users and to other companies.
“To the degree you can extend it and make it personal and release granules of wisdom every day, that’s a very compelling way to at least start building a social media following.”
If you’re still struggling with what to do, you have time. But the longer you wait, the more you’ll have to play catch-up.
“If you haven’t participated, it’s going to be that much more foreign,” Springer says. “It will transition to something. It’s a continuum. The continuum will go, and you’ll have a lot more work to do to catch up.”
