Yesterday we talked about the fact that to have a successful social media platform, you need to ensure that you specifically stand out. While some of the competition and like-minded ministries, blogs, and businesses may be talking about the same thing we are and we find ourselves needing to stand out from them, so much of the time the biggest barrier to success in social media is our own self.
If you are doing social media well, you have more than one network you are invested in. The issue is that each one of these takes time and if you do it effectively to the point that you have a community of people that you invest in more than just a single tweet or status update, each one of those networks can take up to five hours a week. Do we really want to spend even more time posting something unique on each site? Can you even afford it?
Here is where the trouble lies: if you have a Facebook and Twitter account and all your tweets are simply a regurgitation of what you post on Facebook, where is the incentive to signup for both? Put yourself in their shoes, would you signup for both?
So how do we differentiate each social media account from the other? As we shared yesterday, we are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+ and can share what we are doing.
- Google+ This one actually is not a differentiation, but a rule. If you have a blog that you are posting articles onto social media, you need to interact with Google+. The reason: it impacts your Google search results. Its better to have someone +1 your article or even simply posting it than to not have it on there at all. Do it, even if it is only to post your blog articles (like us).
- YouTube We do a lot of video interviews, tutorials, and share our video resources that we have made. To differentiate from other networks, the videos go live on YouTube a week before they are even posted on the blog or any other social media site. At the same time, we do not share any videos on Facebook or Google+ so that those who watch videos will be enticed to subscribe.
- Facebook Our Facebook page is currently in the building followers process and so we are offering an extra couple of incentives, including a free eBook that can only be downloaded there (not even available on our blog), sneak peek photos of upcoming projects not discussed anywhere else, and poll questions. The hope is that these ideas will inspire further likes for us.
- Twitter This is our main connect to networking people at the moment. Want to have a conversation? You can interact on any network, but here we will initiate conversations with you. We have found Twitter to be a very professional network and so we are impacting people more here with our discussions.
How do use each social network uniquely?
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