What is adding value to the community? We hear social media gurus talk about it over and over again, and yet we don't know exactly what is value and how to add value. In this interesting post called "The Top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter", the author listed "not at all adding value" as No. 6. He put it as: I will not follow you because "your updates clearly indicate that your Twitter activity is always, only, about pushing your own service/product".
In this information age, it is important that you get your key message out, but in order to accomplish that, you have to contribute your value to the community. Simply selling the products or services using social media is a dead end. People don't buy that kind of stuff any more. Now that your stakeholders take the initiatives to decide whether to hear your messages, it's time for corporations to take a step back and think about how to add value.
In other words, when you decide to use social media as online marketing tools to sell something, you will never want to make this intention "glaringly obvious". When social media users find out about your real purpose, it takes them no time to block you/unfriend you.
Instead, you want to sound helpful and charming. By that, I mean providing useful information, advice, sharing interesting posts and ideas, contribute to discussions, and engage your followers/friends into the conversation.
Now, let me know what's on your mind.
3 comments:
Too many social media tools exist nowadays. It takes too much time to keep updating your status on your different account. Even though some small tools may help you update all your account once for all, still, people think about updating and checking your friends comments constantly in a day. A phrase "status King/Queen" is talking about these kind of people. Most interesting/hilarious/funny posts will attract attentions, but not serious one.
Personally I like Linkedin, it is more focusing on the topic and useful for professionals.
@ Charlie: I think you made a point that people on Linkedin may make a better effort to add value than other users on Facebook or Twitter.
I liked your main point about how organizations should seek to add value. As Dr. Water's said - give your customers a gift - that something extra that is interesting, newsworthy or engaging. Sadly many organizations that have an online presence miss out on this important step.
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