Social Media Engagement, Week #4
Though there are many different definitions of social media engagement, there are two forms of engagement that dominate: doing it to benefit you and doing it to benefit others. Today, we explore social media engagement that is used to primarily benefit you, your blog, your causes, or your projects. Your job is to conduct social media experiments by engaging with others for your benefit and providing an opinion about those experiments.
Creative Idea Gal’s Thoughts
Social media engagement to benefit you (as opposed to benefiting others) is not as selfish or outlandish as it appears. It’s actually a necessary component of the author platform. If you want to carve out a little space on the blogosphere to let the world know about your writing or your services or widgets for sale, you can’t just put the marketing stuff out there without interacting with customers. You have to learn to strike up conversations with others about your own projects to get others interested and asking questions.
I generally engage with others to benefit my own writing through my community fan pages on Facebook. Because those are my pages designed to promote two different kinds of writing, that is considered social media engagement that benefits me. Technically, that type of engagement is all about me, but I try to do it in ways that are interesting or intriguing. Really, it all boils down to experimenting with different ways of communicating with your audience and figuring out what yields better responses.
Helpful Resources
“It’s the devices we employ, the intentions that motivate engagement, and the value we offer that dictate the significance of the brand-specific social graphs we weave..” – Brian Solis, for Mashable
“Engagement, then, must be authentic, looking more like a conversation between friends than a commercial message. Otherwise engagement in social media becomes a ‘polite way of talking about audience, consumer demographics, and segmentation while seeming sensitive to Internet users, the culture, and their community’.” – Dr. Angela Hausman, for Business 2 Community
Writing Prompt 047
- Step 1: Think about how best to engage people for your benefit using any tool that is available to you: your blog, your Facebook community page, Twitter, Google+, etc.
- Step 2: Conduct your own social media experiments by engaging people specifically to benefit you. You can experiment by asking questions, taking polls, responding to comments, or other ways.
- Step 3: After you engaged others to benefit you, provide an opinion about those experiences. Did people comment on your status updates, tweets, or blog posts? Do you have fans who like you, your blog, or your projects? Are people responding to your questions? Your opinion should include a healthy mix of positive and negative observations.
Please be sure to leave comments about this writing prompt. We want to hear from you!
About the Author
Amanda M. Socci, J.D., is a freelance writer with 14 years of experience writing professionally. Socci currently cuts her blogging chops on her personal portfolio blog, the Creative Idea Gal blog, and on an online news site, Mount Vernon Patch. Inspired by Nina Amir’s Write Nonfiction in November writing challenge, she created a unique 10-month training program for Writenonfictionnow.com and Writenonfictioninnovember.com blog visitors.
Grab the badge of honor and upload it to your blog. Follow the prompts three times a week (M-W-F) right here.
Leave a Reply