There are so many ways to connect our different social media platforms together these days – almost too many. For example, we can feed our Twitter updates to Google Buzz, send our StumbleUpon reviews to FriendFeed, feed our YouTube favorites to Twitter, and our Diggs to Facebook.
But is sending all of our activity to every single platform helpful? Is it even ‘social’? Or is the shotgun approach to social media causing us to lose traction with our followers and fans?
One of the most important things to understand about our social media efforts is that each platform, or channel, has a different audience with different interests and desires. Our Facebook fans might not really care about every comment we leave on Digg, or every tweet we send out. But many people are doing it anyway, and the end result of this shotgun approach may end up with them losing some fans, not increasing the level of engagement.
For many, it may be that they’ve been told that sending out their links to as many different places as possible is good for search engine visibility, or that it helps to be fishing in many different ponds at the same time. And while that might be true in general, if we drill down on which of the tactics get the best results for each platform ( number of clickthroughs, number of shares, etc.), we may find that by being more selective with our updates, we actually get more engagement, which ultimately leads to more traffic, more email opt-ins, more leads.
Using a shotgun approach and sending one update to all of our profiles at the same time may seem to be less work and less time than doing each one individually, but in the end, it’s the results that speak the loudest. If we spend a little more time and thought on our social media efforts, the increased return on those investments could be the difference between being lost in the crowd and being a rockstar.
We can start by determining the reasons why people engage us on the different platforms. Why do people follow us on Twitter? What benefit do they receive by becoming our Facebook fan? How often do people leave comments on FriendFeed or Buzz instead of the original article page? How many times do they actually click through and engage us on our own blog or website?
Most of this information can be found with a quick study of the number of Retweets, ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ on Facebook, and comments left on our profiles and blogs. Additional insight on this will come from using Google alerts for our business name, our usernames, and our product names, or by using a reputation management tool. We can also go to each of our profiles and view them as if we’re a potential follower or customer. Would we follow that profile? Or does it look just like broadcasting of the same links and information? For additional feedback, we can simply ask our followers and fans how we’re doing on each platform.
Once we’ve got a basic understanding of what works for each of our different networks, we can begin to tailor our efforts to the wants and needs of each group of users. For instance, a blog post with a really catchy title might get ‘curiosity clicks’ from Twitter users, but it might not hook our desired audience the way that a specific, keyword-rich title would. Sharing a link with the digg or StumbleUpon toolbar might work for generating organic diggs and StumbleUpon reviews, but it also might work against us with those users who want the original link.
The tactics we use to increase the level of engagement on the various social media platforms will be different for each business, and the time we spend doing the research on best practices for our audience will be time well spent.
What methods have you found to be most useful in increasing social media engagement?
[Derek Markham is a writer, a father, a WordPress addict, and social media butterfly who loves to share what's new and interesting in his world in under 140 characters. Hit him up with an @ reply anytime for help, advice, or just to say hey!]
Image: © Sandor Kacso – Fotolia.com
Sweet post.