Communicating on Social Media

So what are the keys to communicating through social media these days? Everyone hears about social media all the time. Oh, you got to be on Facebook, you're there. You got to be on LinkedIn, you're there, you got to be on Twitter, you're there. But for many, many professional people, they kind of feel like I'm on all these places. It takes time. What do I really get out of it? I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. I want to give you a few tips that can help you communicate more effectively. Social media. For starters, find the one medium where you feel most comfortable communicating, that you enjoy being there and you feel like you're connecting with people. It's far better to really dominate in one, whether it's Facebook or Twitter, than to try to spread yourself thin over 30 different or 40 different platforms. That just doesn't work well for anyone other than the largest of corporations that has, you know, communication staff of 100 people. So focus on one and try to do that well and figure out what is a good match with your talent. So for example, I'm a public speaking expert and trainer and a media trainer. So that's why I've traditionally focused on outlets that are easier to speak on, namely YouTube, any video file sharing platform, and increasingly these days itunes, because it's just easier for people to listen to me talk. They're driving a car or on a train or a commute, as opposed to Blogger and Tumblr and some social media platforms that are text based. Even though I blogged for many years and have written books, I just try to focus on what is a better fit for what I'm all about. The next really big thing, and I confess I'm sometimes guilty of this, is if you really want to connect on social media and communicate, yet spend most of your time listening to others, watching other people's videos, reading their tweets, commenting on their stuff, reposting their stuff, sharing their stuff. So I try to follow what I consider to be the top 100 experts in in public speaking and communicating. So I quite frequently hit share on Elisa B. Marshall tweet. She is a well known blogger in the communication space. You could say she's a competitor, I would say a friendly competitor. But I also think she has a lot of great ideas, great information. So I'm constantly retweeting her stuff. Does she occasionally retweet mine? Yeah, but I don't tweet and say, oh, you got to retweet mine. It doesn't work that way. You have to really connect with other people. The big mistake most people make is they want to just push, push, push, push. Here's my stuff, my stuff, my stuff. I don't care about anyone else's stuff. And then they look, no one's sharing their stuff. So that's really the biggest secret. Gary Vaynerchuk, who is a huge social media guru, wildly successful, always talks about how his rise to power with his TV wine library. He spent 15 minutes creating his show every night, but he spent eight hours a day until 2 in the morning listening to other people's comments about wine, answering other people's questions about wine, going into other chat rooms about wine. So he was creating, putting his stuff out for 15 minutes, eight hours on other people's stuff. And that worked for him. It might work for you. Whatever it is you do remember, you've got to engage, interact with other people. You got to listen to their stuff before they'll listen to yours.