A few social media tips I’ve learned

Richard Charpentier National Monuments of the Southwest, Notes from Rich Leave a Comment

As I’ve been baptized by fire into the world of extreme social media I’ve learned a few things that I thought I’d share here.  As we relaunch our campaign to get started on the National Monuments of Arizona (and then we’ll look to the other states) these few tips are geared toward reaching the most people possible.  Get your message in front of many, right?

Facebook

So many people are on Facebook.  That’s why people setup business pages, launch campaigns, and invite you to seedy bar after seedy bar on it.  Heck, I even created an event on our last effort to launch the larger project covering the National Monuments of the 4 Corners States.  When you see something that you appreciate and want to help promote we’ve got a simple do, and a simple don’t:

Don’t “Like It”:  Liking something on Facebook is the equivalent of saying to yourself, “Oh, well that’s nice.”  Likes, while they can make someone feel really great about their post internally (them saying to themselves “ooh, someone likes me and I’m validated”) don’t get you anywhere further on Facebook.  It doesn’t identify to those in your circle that anything has gone on.

Do Share It:  When you share a post or page that someone has put up, it appears on your wall and is visible to the people who follow along with you.  Suddenly the person who posted it has not only reached the people that follow them, they have now reached your 4000 friends as well.  Thus making something go viral….or viral-esque.

Twitter

Twitter has been the place where the social media baptism really occurred.  I have learned to read those cryptic 140 character messages, I now know that a “#” is not the pound symbol, but rather a hash tag.  Hash tags are rulers of their domains, and help you reach a person or two in between the several thousand other tweets that occurred 13 seconds after you posted.  It’s nice to know at 42 that I’m adaptable and can still learn things.  And if you’re interested in Twitter here are a few gems.

Home made non-dairy pizza, dough made from scratch so there is no possibility of honey in it!

Home made non-dairy pizza, dough made from scratch so there is no possibility of honey in it!

Marking something as a favorite gains you followers:  If you want to gain more followers, go around and favorite their posts.  You don’t actually have to read the post, act on it, or do anything that might be alarming.  Simply Favorite the post.  The poster will receive a message that you have favorited their post.  And similar to liking things on Facebook, this will help their ego temporarily, inflate their self worth, and they’ll come see who you are since you were so kind as to raise their spirits for the day.  Favoriting their post will most likely get you a new follower, as they’re hoping you’ll continue validating them post after post in the future, and with luck you’ll sit down to a pizza dinner with them someday and play rummy.

Marking something as a favorite doesn’t help the poster at all:  Favoriting something is all about you, not about them.  See, nobody in the Twitter Universe pays much attention to what you’ve favorited.  Things are moving too fast in Twitter.  And in order to see that someone has favorited something you have to go to their profile and click on their infinitely long favorite list.  The lists are long because people use favorites to gain followers for themselves, not for others.  Favoriting something is designed to gain you followers, and pizza party buddies.  Today I gained 10 new Twitter followers by favoriting 15 posts just to see.

Re-Tweeting is the Grail:  Re-tweets are the bread and butter of Twitter.  See something you like while you’re looking through “#Travel”?  Well then, for the love of all that is good Re-Tweet it man!  Re-tweeting a post gets the post out in front of all of your followers, as well as the original poster’s followers.  This is how one simple post can suddenly reach 1.5 million people.

The lessons in a nutshell

With all of this in my head, here’s what I’ve taken away.

  1. For every like I’ve gotten on my Facebook posts about our project without someone sharing the post I’ve gotten 1 extra gray hair.  If you’re gonna like it, go ahead and share it too.
  2. For every shared post I’ve gotten during the process I silently wished great things for the person who shared it.  The volume of “Likes” to “Shares” was something like 400 to 1.  Which tells you, I’m going gray fast.
  3. For every “Favorite” I’ve gotten on Twitter I’ve mentally screamed, “The freaking re-tweet button is to the left damn you, to the left!”  The odds someone will see your re-tweet are slim anyways, so why are you holding out on me man?
  4. Every Re-Tweet I’ve gotten is my validation.  No, I don’t need validation as a person.  I need as many people to see the project as possible so we crowd source this thing and get under way.  🙂  I’m on the verge of making a video of us making Vegan Potato Salad in the Airstream!
  5. Every time I see something I dig on Facebook or Twitter, I share it or re-tweet it.  I want to make sure I’m not adding to anyone else’s aged appearance.  And if I’m lucky they’ll invite me to a pizza party that has non-dairy pizza that I can eat, and dough that was made from scratch so I don’t go into anaphylactic shock.  And yes, I enjoy playing Rummy in case you were wondering.

Wrapping up.  If you like our project idea help us promote it.  Share it with friends, re-tweet it with followers.  Make a sandwich board sign and stand on a street corner if you’d like, we’ll take all the help we can get.  Also, you could do a zany thing like backing the project too, as every bit helps.  Skip Starbuck’s tomorrow morning and donate a fiver to the cause.  And if you like the project and our posting, please don’t like or favorite it.  Share it, re-tweet it…..or get that sandwich board sign.  If I see you on a street corner I’ll stop by and we can play a game of Rummy.

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