Social media can really help you grow your brand, personal, professional or otherwise. But do you have what it takes to become a social media god? If you’re looking to take your status to the next level and have worshipers bowing at your feet, take note of the following pointers to help you get on the right path towards eternal life.
1. Pick a Persona
Gods have memorable names, and you can identify certain characteristics because they have known personalities. It’s the personality that your audience will be drawn to, so this needs to become a central and uniform way in which you present yourself online.
Pick a persona that isn’t too far from the truth. You’ll have an easier time maintaining your persona if you don’t have to pretend all the time. Keeping things simple will also mean that others will be able to better identify with your persona once you begin to build your brand.
Keep your core demographic in mind as well. There’s a certain amount of self-selection going on here, so if you stay true to yourself you’ll attract an audience base that is most likely to respond to your persona. Whether you’re the sharp-tongued straight-shooter or the ditsy blonde in a bikini, your persona is your brand, and your audience will reflect this.
2. Lay Down the Law of the Land
You’ll need a base location for all your web activity. This is where you share all the basic information about yourself, and what you’re about. Post your contact information here, as well as all the other places where you can be reached across the web.
It’s also useful to include a bit of the personal and professional on your base website. Depending on your intentions with your online brand, you can choose how personal or professional this base website will be. Don’t forget, you can create a base website that offers a little bit of both, and then display links to other websites that are all personal or all business. This way you can always manage what your base website maintains about your brand, and easily modify it according to where you’re at personally and professionally in your life.
3. Make Your Universe
As I mentioned above, having other websites that build off your base website is a great way to direct different portions of your audience accordingly. This is useful because many of these peripheral sites can be within larger social networks, which may enable you to appeal to a honed in portion of your audience in a more engaging way.
You want to separate certain aspects of your online brand, because you can actually create a larger appeal by doing so. You’re able to zone in on what different audiences need from you, and leverage these audiences better as they’re more comfortable in their own setting.
You’ll also be able to leverage these peripheral websites to push and redistribute your content, which does a few things; links back to your base website, increasing your visibility across social websites and search engines, and grows your readership. Consider these websites stops on a tour–you become more loved by your fans by making personal appearances. The great thing is that these peripheral websites are virtual, so you get to be a truly omnipresent god in that sense.
4. Create (in Less than 7 Days)
Before you can push your content, you have to create content. Some key pointers:
- Be as multimedia friendly as possible. Create photos and videos, add effects and annotations. They don’t have to be perfect, but keep them genuine and true to your persona.
- Write a lot. You don’t have to be long-winded anymore. That’s the beauty of Twitter and Facebook status updates. This also means you can write on the go. What this means for your audience is you essentially have a way to take your followers with you. Make sure they can share the experience as well.
- Interview others. It’s great to hear your almighty opinion, but share the limelight with others. Gaining perspective is good for you as well as your audience, and it makes you look pretty darn social, too. Depending on who you’re interviewing, you can use this to not only increase your deity status, but attract a new wave of followers as well.
- Be consistent. Don’t slack off (too much). If you need a life coach or a virtual assistant to send in reminders or prompts, do it. If you want to automate some of your activity such as scheduled tweets or blog posts, go for it. I won’t tell anybody.
5. Evangelize
Make sure your content goes on tour and makes personal appearances as well. Your content is a remote and readily accessible representation of your persona, so make it shareable and encourage others to spread the good word. Some key pointers:
- Put your multimedia content where it belongs. Videos go on YouTube, Photos go on Flickr. Since large and established multimedia sites like YouTube and Flickr already have tons of users and are accessible through most widely-used search engines, these are good and expected ways in which to launch your multimedia.
- Spread multimedia content outwards. Post your YouTube videos on your base website, Facebook, and Twitter. Pull all your Flickr photos into Facebook albums, and tag them accordingly.
- Personalize your shared content. Think something you’ve created will be of interest to one or two people in particular? Email it to them, share it with them through Digg or post it on their Facebook profile.
6. Recruit Disciples
These are the people that will help you spread the word. Whether you’ve hired them or they’re “working” for free, your content can’t be social unless people are getting the word out.
Assistants can be great, because they can take care of a lot of the tedious, repetitive work that’s involved with the creation and maintenance of a social media persona. Get a college student or an intern that’s interested in learning the ropes. Make sure that their interests are aligned with yours, so that there’s no major clashes to get in the way.
If you’re managing a single employee or an entire team, be direct and communicative so that your message is clear. Subsequently, the message they portray on your behalf will also be clear. Find a way to work well with your assistants or employees–some prefer email and gChat while others utilize sites made for team member collaboration.
You also need to leverage the contacts you’ve made across the social web. Find the influencers and see if you can interact with them on any level. Will they respond to your tweets or even retweet some of your content?
And what about the masses? Incentivize them to spread your content by ensuring that the content is of interest to them. Every once in a while, throw in some perks, such as a contest prize for the person that generates the most retweets based on your original content.
7. Parallel Parables
You can use your content to actually connect with others on a deeper level. Social media is all a cross-section of various forms of communication. Take advantage of this and engage the members of your audience. Grab their attention and make sure you keep it.
Do so by creating valuable content. Start with a good product and you won’t have to convince the world of how great you are. Next, engage with others across the web. This is part of the redistribution process, and is only catalyzed by the presence of disciples which will help you spread your content in a viral manner. But merely chatting with others, encouraging comments and leaving comments are just a few ways in which you can engage your followers.
Use open forums such as Twitter to engage users, as it’s real time an is visible to many. Also use more private forums, such as Facebook. These have a high quality of feedback rates because you’re tapping into your personal social network and those that respond to your engagement will be more likely to have a vested interest in what you have to say.
8. Get Sects
Groups, rather. On FriendFeed, on Facebook, on Twitter. While Twitter in particular doesn’t have a group function, many of the Twitter apps such as TweetDeck do. With groups you can have ready options for the targeted redistribution of your content. These groups will ensure that you have an appreciative sect of followers that are more likely to discuss, share, recommend and redistribute your content.
You don’t have to limit yourself to groups you’ve created. Find some relevant groups that have already been started by others. These people will appreciate your participation and also help support your work and engagement as well.
9. Missionary Style
Every once in a while you have to leave the house. And unplug. It’s generally good for you. Check out some local events, networking and otherwise. Try new things, learn new things, experience new things. This will give you perspective, which will ultimately help you in your quest to become a social media god.
Leaving the house also enables you to attend events, and help create the news that’s spread on the web. Partake in a little bit of mobile blogging and you’re able to bring your audience along with you. It’s a unique way in which to engage your audience while also creating content.
Making connections offline will help your online deity status as well. If you’re meeting with industry-related people, face-to-face meetings give you a tangible connection that often translates beautifully into the online world. This builds your support system and can ultimately help you grow your brand as you increase the number of people that have your back.
10. The Holy Circle
Bring everything back full circle. From the creation and maintenance of your online persona, to the creation and spreading of content, to networking offline in a personal manner, there’s a fluidity to this process that feeds into itself.
Creating a persona that’s based off your own personality helps you remain genuine and dediated to your work. Creating content online and engaging with users helps you become a recognized figure both offline and online. And meeting with others offline will help you build your online network in the end.
Additionally the things you learn offline will give you fodder for the content you create online. Keep all these aspects of godliness balanced, and you’ll be a superpower in no time.
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--it's not about you, even if it happens around you. followers make gods, not gods themselves. the influence of a god is good only as long as it's credible and reputable. people are moved by influence, not influenced by influence. respect followers, if godliness is indeed something you're pursuing.
--there is power in absence. listen to followers, listen to others, if you are so inspired, listen to the (other) stars. a good who speaks/tweets all day at some point devalues what s/he has to say. rhythms of presence and absence are good. they build up demand and can sustain a bit of mystery.
--mystery is still a powerful thing -- it is part of the influence of the desire that creates demand for luxuries and things of high cultural status. godliness/celebrity being among them. make use of mystery. transparency is a great catchphrase but not every person is a government agency accountable to taxpayers and voters. mystery piques the human interest, and interest is motivating.
adrian
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Keep up the great work.
//sid
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I believe we have so many good products; "intellectual assents" if I may call them, and not enough great Social Media Leaders. It's easy to create accounts at every single social media site online (take a few hours but it's possible) but the real step isn't in the idea or desire it's in the plan to go above and beyond to build your brand.
Kristen has yet again give use a very informative and insightful article, delivering a roadmap to step away from the followers and be the one others follow.
...defiantly pressing the blue star...oh yeah this is getting bookmarked right now!
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thanks ;)
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Always,
Phil
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you're absolutely right. you have to be a leader sometimes and establish yourself as an authority instead of merely following others. You must be a social media god!!
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I'm a sharp-tongued straight-shooter to my core.
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