Are you struggling with social media engagement? Struggling with building your audience? You have thousands of Twitter followers, maybe even 50 or 100 people who have clicked “like” on your Facebook page.
However, even with this early success you’ve seen in social media, people just simply aren’t engaging with your brand? You are not feeling the social media love that others talk about.
Top 10 Reasons Why Your Audience Doesn’t Like You
1. You are not engaging. You spend all day listening or retweeting. You are not genuinely engaging with your existing network. You are on the sidelines watching the game go on.
Tip: Engage. Have a conversation. Get in the game.
2. You are not providing value. Your website may lack content that resonates with your audience. Your tweets are well let’s say, tweets. They look, smell and act like everyone else. There are more than 10 Billion Tweets sent in a year. Tweeting a simple tweet that looks and smells like every other tweeter will get you no where.
Tip: Provide value. Inspire and connect with your audience. Get in their head and learn who they are and what they need. Provide content that helps them solve real business problems. Provide tips that help them move their business forward with new skills.
3. You are not following people back. If you have people following you and you are sitting on your arrogant Twitter mountain thinking you don’t have to follow them you might want to think again. This thinking drives me nuts. Show the love. Be a good friend.
Tip: Develop a follow-back strategy. There are different schools of thought on this. My personal recommendation is at minimum make an effort to follow people back. Don’t sit high on your Twitter mountain with the expectation everyone owes you something. They don’t.
4. You are not a good social media friend. You don’t retweet. You don’t thank people who show you love. You never follow back. You don’t comment on other blogs in a genuine way. You don’t thank people who comment on your blog.
Tip: Show the social love. Genuinely engage and make your audience and network know that you care about them. At minimum let them know you know they are there! Often times if I don’t have time to thank all of my retweeters or send a series of #FF follow friday recommendations on Twitter I will send a couple tweets during the day thanking my network. I let them know I appreciate them and all the social love they gave me!
5. You are boring. Sorry folks but it could be you are just boring. I am seeing many people who have a boring profile picture, boring content. They are the same ones who sit all day and retweet news feeds of mortgage rates or market news. They are providing no value and not engaging.
Tip: Brand yourself. Understand your audience. Who are they and what do they need. Who are you and what can you offer them. Give your business and brand a personality. Dare to stand above the norm. If you shoot for status quo that is exactly what you will receive, if you’re lucky. It may be less.
6. Your website stinks. If you are boring, your content is boring and your website stinks you have three strikes and you’re probably already out of the social media game.
Tip: Social media is about conversation. Engage in conversation with interesting content, design and brand. Hire a web developer and freshen up your website. If you don’t have the funds to do such then find a self-help site or teach yourself WordPress blog at minimum.
7. Your social profiles stink. If your Twitter background is the default and your Facebook Fan Page has no customization you once again are shooting for status quo.
Tip: Hire a consultant or an agency to spice up your profiles. If you don’t have the funds the leverage an off the shelf service. There are several Facebook Fan Page engines you can use yourself that are affordable.
8. Your Facebook Fan Page is all about you. What are you doing to engage your audience?
Tip: Engage your Facebook audience. Have fun. Ask them questions? Do some research. Ask them what they need, what they want. Leverage the discussion tab to invite people to introduce themselves.
9. People don’t know the real you. You are hiding behind an avatar (social media profile photo). You are not sharing the real you. You are using corporate speak. You aren’t using video, no interesting blogs.
Tip: Let yourself shine. Try out video. Come out behind the avatar and let people get to know you. Don’t be afraid of video. If you use video you will attract people who like you, people who want to business with you.
10. You are afraid. Because of what I said above you are afraid to come out and play in social media. You have been intimidated by the mean blog posts that are surfacing the net on social media gurus, wannabe gurus etc.
Tip: Don’t let the bullies scare you! Be confident. Have fun. If you don’t you are never going to make it in social media, business or life.
Your Turn!
What are you doing to build community? Are you really engaging? What are you doing right that others can learn from? What do you find most difficult in building and engaging with your community?
RonHeimbecher said:
I'll add lucky #13 --- Finish what you've started. (Not doing this is something I'm really guilty of) if you're starting down a path with a series of posts, make darn sure to take your readers to the end of it.
Great post, it's fun to be as old as Moses and still learning something every day.
Ron
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Sun, 2010-09-05 14:57 — Ron HeimbecherPamMoore said:
I agree Ron. I have several different series of blog posts I am working on. For the reason you stated above I have not published them yet as I want to ensure I Have the full series complete.
Glad I was able to inspire your day! I've seen you around and your avatar profile pic and happy smile w/the water always makes me smile!
Have a great day!
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Sun, 2010-09-05 15:38 — Pam MoorePhilipTurpin said:
I wrote an article a little while back about a strategy for your #3 (I think it may have, sadly, turned into a mini rant at the time!).
I found that there's a certain type of person who plays, what I'd class as, a "follow game". Specifically, they follow you then immediately unfollow. They then wait to see if you follow them back and, if you do, then follow you again. That way they keep their follow/follower numbers at almost parity.
It's tactics that I, personally, despise as it detracts from the whole SM essence and is tantamount to playing the numbers game, IMO. So, to counter these tactics I tend to go to the Twitter interface once or twice a week and see who's following me and decide if I want to follow back or not.
I might add that I have no problem with following people who don't follow back. I don't follow people expecting it to be reciprocated. It doesn't necessarily have to be a two way deal for me because there are plenty of people who provide me with value that don't, for whatever reason, reciprocate a follow. Just because they don't follow back it doesn't mean I should "cut my nose off despite my face". People who get all funny about not being followed back, IMO, just "don't get it".
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Sun, 2010-09-05 08:45 — Philip TurpinPamMoore said:
I agree Philip. I see both sides to this coin. My main beef is the blog posts I see who complain about people unfollowing them, however they also are quite arrogant in stating "well maybe I didn't want to follow you back". My point is if you don't want to follow someone back then don't complain about them unfollowing you!? ;)
I too have no problem w/people not following me back. I don't monitor. I usually only notice if I try to DM someone who I am conversing with and for some reason they aren't following me. I follow people based on content and conversation. If they are providing me one of those two chances are I am following them and probably won't ever notice if they don't.
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Sun, 2010-09-05 15:37 — Pam MooreEugene Mandel said:
Pam,
I see brands violate #8 ("Your Facebook fan page is all about you") all the time. Instead of mixing self promotion with interesting curated news they just keep jamming the "we are awesome" posts down their fans' throat.
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Sat, 2010-09-04 13:34 — Eugene MandelPamMoore said:
I agree. I think most do this because they don't have an engagement strategy or they simply don't know how to do it. There is both art and science in social media and just as in real life, relationships take both art and science. Relationships are about people. Brands must engage as people and realize their facebook fans are people, not bots. People like to be inspired, laugh etc. Yes, they want to be educated, they like good blog articles but they also want to connect at a human level.
Fans will tolerate the "we are awesome" posts only when you've connected with them and you have also helped them become awesome by inspiriting and connecting with them!
Thx for your input!
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Sun, 2010-09-05 15:53 — Pam MooreDennis Graham said:
Excellent post Pam. Point #2 (providing value) resinates with me the most. There's a lot noise and regurgitation in social media (and the web in general), and there's little more refreshing than finding enriching and valuable information that you can use.
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Sat, 2010-09-04 08:50 — Dennis GrahamPamMoore said:
Amen!
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Sun, 2010-09-05 15:47 — Pam MoorePalak said:
Nice informative post.Your 7 points stands as a measure to check our quality of presence on social media platforms.It is very much essential that we know the reason why we are there,what is our strategy and what steps would lead us there.
Recently I came across this amazing post by Social Media Examiner:http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/top-10-facebook-pages/
The post shows few examples of companies that are capitalizing on their use of social media platforms.These examples are a good source of imagination, creativity and liveliness that we can bring to our conversations.
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Fri, 2010-09-03 16:02 — PalakPamMoore said:
Thanks Palak. Yes, I agree quality is key priority. I did see the post you mention. A great summary of some good Facebook pages.
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Sun, 2010-09-05 15:39 — Pam MooreSherry said:
Thanks this was extremely insightful. I found myself there regarding facebook because I just started and I suppose a bit apprehensive about putting more personality into it. Based on these comments facebook is just like any other marketing campaign I've done..personality must be included otherwise you are just facts and facts can be a bit boring.3eebz
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Fri, 2010-09-03 15:43 — SherryPamMoore said:
Yes, don't be afraid to let your real self and personality shine! I think it's the biggest mistakes marketers in early stages of social media make. If you let your real self shine, people will be attracted to you who have your same beliefs and values. Yes, you may turn a few off but who cares b/c they will be the ones you wouldn't have enjoyed working with anyway. You need to have joy in what you do in business. My belief is the best way to do this in social media is be real. Best of luck to you!
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Sun, 2010-09-05 15:42 — Pam MoorePink said:
Hi Pam...
Really good article....
Connect is so important than just communicate.
Thank to you....
God bless you.
Regards,
Pinkan
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Fri, 2010-09-03 12:24 — PinkPamMoore said:
Thanks so much for the kind words Pink. Yes, connection is the name of the game! Inspire - Connect - Achieve!
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Sun, 2010-09-05 15:49 — Pam MooreKatie McCaskey said:
Great list. I'll add:
#11 - You're just there to sell something.
#12 - You're calling yourself an expert without demonstrating equal measures of humility and results!
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Fri, 2010-09-03 12:01 — Katie McCaskeyPamMoore said:
Both of your points are good. Demonstration of results and knowledge is key. Thanks!
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Sun, 2010-09-05 15:49 — Pam MooreAmel (Focus Queen) said:
Hi Pam,
I really loved your article. I think one of the reason that may hold back people from playing in social media is...lack of time. They don't know how to manage their social media time and they are scared to spend too much hours socializing and not seeing any return from it. But one of the solution that may help is to automate as much as possible the social media tasks (like using a free tool such us www.NutshellMail.com to aggregate tweets and have them sent to our email once a day) and also to decide on how much minutes or hours we want to allocate for playing with social media during a day.
We must be careful not to make social media a distraction but a regular daily 'must do' task that will help us keep the relationship with our friends and followers going and not dying.
I wish you the best,
Amel
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Fri, 2010-09-03 11:43 — Amel (Focus Queen)PamMoore said:
Thanks Amel. The key with social media is to integrate into the DNA of your biz and marketing plans and activities. It shouldn't be looked at as a band-aid or add on. Instead the question to be asked is "how can social media help me better meet my objectives".
The truth is if they spend all their time "socializing" with no alignment to why they are doing such then chances are, yes it will be wasted time.
Automation is great as long as it is automating what will help you achieve your goals and objectives. I have seen far too many spend months learning tools and technology yet still they lack a plan, objectives and ROI.
Also agree relationships take time. They must be real and involve conversation to keep alive.
Thanks for your input!
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Sun, 2010-09-05 15:47 — Pam MoorePost new comment