At the risk of being labeled the social media preacher, I can’t tell you often enough: social media is about relationships.
Think about your real-life relationships. Do you spout business statistics every time you speak with your best friend? When you talk to your grandmother, do you fill the conversation with your frustration with back-ordered goods? Do you scream “look at me, look at me!” whenever you accidentally-on-purpose meet your neighbor at the mailbox?
Exactly. You don’t. So why do you behave that way when using social media? The biggest thing we are looking for as business owners, authors and service providers is to sell our widgets, bottom line. But to create loyal buying fans, you must also entertain while utilizing social media as part of your marketing plan.
Try these ideas.
Humor
If you are naturally gifted in the funny department, this will be easy for you. Posting humorous one-liners, short jokes, and wry observations on life will get the attention of your fans.
If you need a little help, go on a mining operation to dig up funny stuff from other sources.
- Search for and follow Facebook and Google+ pages with humorous cartoons, funny photographs, and interesting quotes. It’s easy to use the share option to post their funnies on to your page.
- Search for funny videos on YouTube and post to your social media accounts.
- Follow funny personalities like Ellen or Jim Carrey and share their stuff.
- Find humorous blogs – and there are tons – and share content.
- Pinterest has tons of funny photos and infographics to share.
Heartstrings
Show no mercy when pulling heartstrings. Your fans love a good warm and fuzzy story, photograph, or video. Stories about rescued animals always do the trick, as do triumph-over-all-odds stories, and help-others-in-need stories. These are readily available on news sites, animal sites, and YouTube.
Photographs
Fans love anything visual, so give them what they want by posting photographs.
- Take close-up photos of everyday objects or your products and ask your fans to try to identify what the item is.
- Post photos of yourself doing something interesting, crazy, unique, or scary. Dyeing your hair pink, purple, and blue can meet all of those criteria, for example.
- Search for photos, or take your own, of interesting scenarios and ask your fans to caption them. Spice it up by offering a freebie for the funniest one.
- Ask fans to post their own photos. Set a theme or run a contest, and then make the best photo your Facebook cover photo for a week or give them a prize.
Your fans will love you even more when you entertain them using social media, and well-entertained fans are buy-your-stuff fans.