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1-Page Summary of The Art of Social Media
Perfecting Your Profile
Your social media profile is like a résumé because people scan it to learn more about you. You want your profile to convey that you’re affable, reliable, and capable so that people will view you as such.
If you want to be successful online, don’t use a picture of yourself as your profile photo. Take several pictures from different angles and choose the one that looks best. Make sure it’s not too symmetrical or else people will think it’s boring. Once you’ve picked out a good photo, make sure to use it in all of your social media accounts so that people can easily find your page.
Choose a tagline that sums up the overarching purpose of your personal brand or organization. Use it across all social media networks to build a desirable narrative about yourself. To make your online profile look more professional, obtain a vanity URL. View what you’ve created in an incognito window so you can see it as others will and not as its creator.
Content Curation
It is important to create your own content and learn how to find great content from other sources. This will keep people engaged with you. To do this, you need to curate the best of what others have created and share it with your audience. Tailor that content for those who are interested in learning more about what matters most to them by using online platforms such as LikeAnalyzer (which lets you check on and “tweak” your Facebook page) and Facebook’s analytics (which are a rich resource for finding out who your fans are).
Find trending content through services that cater to your interests. You can do this by using Reddit or StumbleUpon, or joining online communities with similar interests.
It is important to share content that already exists. You can do this by resharing (sharing again) other people’s posts and engaging positively with them. You should also be active, posting from three to twenty times a day.
To make it easier to share your content, use platforms such as Buffer and HootSuite. You can schedule posts on those sites. Don’t rely too much on search engine optimization; instead, focus on creating interesting content that people will want to share. Schedule the posts using a platform like GoogleDocs or Excel so you don’t have to remember when they go out.
Crafting Valuable Posts
A post is valuable to other users when it is helpful or informative. Posts that are likely to be shared on social media have these traits:
- The best social media posts are the ones that appeal to your followers’ interests, reflect their personalities and opinions, and get them to click on your content. To accomplish this, you need to understand what they’re interested in by paying attention to what they share with you. You also want your content to be concise and organized so it’s easy for people who see it on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. You should acknowledge the original creator of any shared content if possible as well as use hashtags (e.g., #socialmedia) when appropriate so people can find your post later via a search engine query or someone else’s tweet about it. Your title needs to be eye-catching while still reflecting the topic of the content being shared; e.g., “How Social Media Is Changing Marketing” instead of just “Social Media.” Finally, you should post at times when most of your followers are online so that more will see it right away.”
Interacting with Others
Once you post content online, other people will comment on it. Some of them may offer positive feedback, but others may leave negative comments. It’s best to ignore those and not get involved in long arguments with them. If someone writes an offensive or profane comment, delete it or block that user so they can’t write any more comments.
