Basic Social Networking Self-Promotion
My disclaimer here is that I don't claim to be the world's biggest expert on the subject of social networking. However, I have done enough of it to be in a position to offer a good amount of helpful advice regarding the subject. I also have experience in the area of using social networking as a means of promoting my writing, music, comic strips and other creative works.
If you are someone who is involved in creative things such as writing, art, music and so on, having social networking accounts are important for promoting your work. You have the potential to reach so many people through the Internet that trying to promote your work without using the Internet makes very little sense.
I personally have several social networking accounts. They are primarily for the purpose of promoting my various creative works. However, the accounts I use the most are my Facebook and Twitter accounts. So I can give a few tips on how to use them effectively.
Post a Few Times a Day
Let's say that you have approximately 2,000 followers on Twitter. If you were to send out a tweet at 8:00 AM, not all of your followers would see it. This is simply because not everyone goes on Twitter in the morning. Some people do and some people don't. The same would be true regarding the evening. If you tweet out something in the evening, some of your followers will not see it because they don't go on in the evening.
This is why it is recommended that you do some tweets in the morning and some in the evening. Maybe you can do a few throughout the day as well. That way you will be able to reach all of your followers; or at least the ones who were online sometime during that day. Posting a few times a day maximizes the potential that your tweets will be seen.
However, posting too often becomes a nuisance, so you need to try to keep it down to just three or four tweets a day, spread throughout the day. If people keep seeing one post after another from you, they may just get annoyed and stop following you.
The same could be true regarding Facebook. If you do one post after another, all day long people will do one of two things. Either they will stop following you or mentally tune out anything that you post. Should things come to that point, having a social networking account will then be pretty much useless.
Don’t Be Too Self-promotional on Personal Pages
There are basically two different types of Facebook accounts. One is the personal Facebook account and the other is the fan page type of account. Fan pages can be created for a number of different businesses. It's normal to do a lot of business or self-promotional types of posts on the fan pages because that's what people are generally there for. However, on the personal Facebook pages, you need to be more careful as to how many of your posts are self-promotional. That could turn off a lot of your Facebook "friends."
I put the word friends in quotation marks because not everyone who is a Facebook friend is a real friend. They are more like an online acquaintance. Too many self-promotional posts will turn them off. So you need to sort of mix things up on your personal Facebook page.
Mix Things Up
By saying mix things up I mean to post some things that are not self-promotional. Maybe you could post a funny video from YouTube or an online article you think some may be interested in. Just post some things that don't have anything to do with you so that when you do post something pertaining to yourself, you're not beating a dead horse. You can't make things always be about you. That turns a lot of people off. It gets to the point where they start to tune you out and it may even get to the point where they no longer follow you.
It is even a good idea to mix things up a little bit on your Facebook fan page as well, just to try to keep things interesting. Sometimes just a post with simple text is good. Maybe just a quick joke or something to that effect. Recently, I have been experimenting with some new approaches and I posted some quick one-liner jokes and they have gotten some good responses. Then people go to my page and comment on my post. Since they are on my page, they check out my other posts, including my self-promotional ones.
I am always experimenting with new approaches and you should as well, just to test and see what works. That alone will ad some variety. Besides, sometimes you have to change the approach every now and then just to get people to continue to pay attention to what you are posting.
Reach Out to Others
Another thing you should do on Facebook is check out the birthdays of your friends. You will get notifications of your friends' birthdays. Post "Happy Birthday!" on their page. If they are people who don't pay much attention to you or your posts, it may help to pull them in and get them curious about checking out your page and what may be on it. Some may actually appreciate the gesture as well.
Another thing to do on Facebook is to check out what your friends are posting and hit the like button or leave a quick comment on their post. People appreciate that and are more likely to do the same with your posts. Also, if you don't engage others, they sometimes will delete you as a friend.
Avoid Certain Topics
If you intend to use Facebook for the purpose of promoting your creative works or business, you are better off not engaging in political discussions. If you really want to anger people or get them to drop you as a friend on Facebook, offer a political opinion they strongly disagree with. You will also spend too much of your time arguing with people over politics and in most cases, you won't be swaying their opinion anyway, regardless as to how brilliant you think your political commentary may be.
When posting something that you may consider funny, be extra careful as not to include humor that may be considerably offensive to a great number of people. Sure, there are some people who are offended by just about everything but the majority of people only get offended by certain things. So be careful in that regard.
To Sum Things Up
I could probably be here for a long time discussing these things. I realize I concentrated much more on Facebook than on Twitter but it's only because Facebook is more engaging than Twitter is. Some of the rules, though, that are applied to Facebook could be applied to Twitter as well. In any case, I hope these tips work out well for you.
© 2017 Bob Craypoe