10 Habits of Highly Efficient Social Media Power Users
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Many people view social media as a waste of time while others expect them to be some kind of promised land for self promotion. Both fail!
The truth is of course somewhere in between those opposites. It of course depends – on you.
It can make a difference how you use social media. It can be a really powerful tool for many purposes!
In short it’s a difference whether you actively use social media for your purposes or whether social media use you as part of their unpaid workforce.
Read on to learn how to use social media efficiently and become a genuine power user people respect and algorithms push!
Why Social Media Does Not Work for You
Both naysayers and self-promoters will never use social media to their fullest potential. Why? Read on to find out.
While it is easy to waste your time on addictive social media sites you can use them responsibly. Also excessively selfish promotion is not social by definition.
When used correctly social media both benefit yourself and also the respective communities. I’m not entirely free of addiction and have to fight time wasting tendencies myself.
I have – by now and after years of participation – found out several key factors of using social media in the best possible way.
I’m not a famous influencer but I’m an active user at the below mentioned communities:
Moreover I am occasionally participating or contributing on
- YouTube
- Tumblr
- Ello
to name just a few social media venues I’m less active on.
While I am not trying “to leverage traffic” directly from these communities most of the time I benefit from these in several ways:
- recognition as a social media specialist
- connections to clients, some approach me, others look me up
- inspiration – I feel better afterwards when I take a break to pin
- information – I’m the first one to know what’s going on in my fields of interest
- global reach – this is no joke, people from all over the world know me
To make sense social media need to work both ways. It needs to work for the site and you too.
In case you spend hours daily as a user generating content for free you are basically working like a slave.
There must be a mutual benefit so that you do not get exploited. Do only two or fewer of the above points apply to you? Do none other positive outcomes come to your mind?
When Social Media Sucks Change Your Mind
In this case you should rethink the way you use social media. Then these companies use and abuse you as a free workforce.
You are the product not the customer when there is no tangible benefit of social media usage for you.
The best way to make social media work for the mutual benefit of you and not only the venture capitalists behind them is setting up a blog. Remember that social media otherwise own all of you:
- your social relations
- your content
- your time
Having a self-hosted blog means remaining your own master. As a blogger you can use social media to drive traffic to your blog or not, but at least nobody can
- take away your content
- make you pay for contacting your friends
- resell your private data
- make money off your work
Without a blog you may end up dealing with one or all of the issues above while you earn nothing on from your contributions.
Your blog is your focal point of your social media activity.
Implying that you already have a blog you should try to stick to the following 10 habits of highly efficient social media power users:
1. Use social media in the morning, during breaks or in the evening. Socialize when you’re not able to work yet or already. When tired relax at the virtual water cooler.
Social media will allow you to spend the time somewhat productively despite fatigue. Of course do not spend all your free time using it and do not waste your best working hours.
Schedule social media management or social media marketing as actual tasks in your todo-list. It’s not wasted time when you do it with purpose on purpose.
2. Do not read daily newspapers or direct news sources. Let the “wisdom of crowds” of social media users filter the important stuff for you.
This way you save time for actual engagement. Check only websites you really can’t live without directly.
3. Use a feed reader like Feedly or Netvibes and only read the headlines relevant in a given moment. I use Feedly for many years after trying numerous other feed readers:
Feedly also offers many useful premium features to power users, especially teams can benefit from them.
On Feedly or Netvibes you can group blogs by topics, think design or SEO . I only read the green blogs when I’m done with my work e.g.
4. Socialize with your friends on several platforms. This way no company can take away your social capital or sell it back to you once they leave beta, their share plummets or the company is swallowed by another less scrupulous one.
5. Never actively search for content you could share on social media, share things that you read and like anyway. When it ranks on top of search everybody knows it already probably.
Unless of course your search for news. That can work but be choosy! make sure you get content curation right when sharing!
6. Share things that are popular on one platform to another when you think it might be suitable for this audience as well.
Do not just share the same things everybody else already did.
Popular content and “me too” shares are closely related but have a very different outcome.
7. Focus on only a few of your favorite social media sites. Do not use the most popular ones but those which have the most benefit to you personally.
How to decide? Choose either those suiting your interests best or having a positive impact on your online presence not necessarily via traffic only.
For instance LinkedIn may be less important for referral traffic but very good for my reputation.
Also Instagram is negligible for traffic but I established actual relationships there with people I appreciate.
8. To get traffic via social media use them like Domino: for instance in the best case I just need to share a story on LinkedIn in order to get it tweeted by others
9. Do not push your own content at social media communities unless they really condone it and you are a well known and/or respected community member there.
10. Do share content of your favorite bloggers and peers. Link them in your blog posts and befriend them where it does make sense.
For instance befriending people on Twitter or LinkedIn does only make sense in case you want their content served in your personal stream.
People you follow or connect with are also able to send you messages.
This can get annoying on sites like Twitter and LinkedIn where some people use bots to send automated messages.
When you develop these 10 habits you will get quite popular on social media just after using them for a while.
Be There and Contribute or Fail
Participation is key. When you do not expect instant gratification via loads of traffic you will reap the benefits later.
You will succeed in the middle or long term also as a blogger. Eventually you will get loads of traffic anyway.
Social media is not a one night stand, it’s a stable relationship. Participation means contributing value on a regular basis without automating everything or acting like a robot.
Once you understand that, you’re on your way to become a power user. To be honest it’s not solely about power, influence or reach though.
You don’t have to be a top user to be a power user. It’s not about numbers. It’s about how you participate not just how much.
A few die hard supporters are more important than thousands of casual visitors. True fans who listen to you for years are immensely more valuable.
* Creative Commons image by Hakan Dahlström
Great post Tad … can I add 2 more?
Can I suggest a catheter as #11.
IV feeding as #12
One of the nicest things I have found with social media is that I tend to bump into Web friends in different places and it suddenly makes you a little more confident in newer circles.
Thanks for this Tad, brilliant as usual.
Although I have to admit, I’m still struggling with some sites – every time I go to share something, someone else has done it already. I think that’s a direct consequence of having changed my reading habits to only half a dozen blogs daily and focusing more on other stuff…maybe I need to get out there and read more… seems my friends are all reading the same stuff as me – and usually, pointing it out :)
My kids were watching me on Twitter and two other sites last night. One of them looked at me and said…”Mom it’s like everywhere you go you see the same people, over and over. These people must be the populars.”
That’s what Social Networking efficiently can produce. Even a teen can see it…
Good stuff. I should really use these social media sites. I pretty much enjoy coming back to the blogs I normally read and any recommended to me through those blogs. One thing is I don’t do this to get traffic, I just like reading SEO and marketing posts.
Lid: Yes, it’s known issue. It always happens to me as well. All the good posts have been shared already.
You can reshare more instead of sharing as if it’s new. People will notice that as well.
supermon: Yeah, kids learn 100 times faster what’s important than we do.
Jeff: You need a cold turkey!
david: Yes, recommendation by someone you accept and follow is the best thing that can happen to you.
Your completely right, you may get a little something from a one night stand but a stable relationship will provide more positives!
Great article. There is a wasteful and beneficial side to most things and it’s a misconception to group a person based on their interests.
Thanks for shedding some light!
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People should write good content which will guarantee good exposure in social media networks. With crappy content you can find millions friends and never get any good traffic from social media site.
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An excellent topic, Tad, since we all have this time-allocation problem. I think you have to do a certain minimum amount of social appearances almost daily so that you maintain the visibility of your hopefully unique username. Once you’ve built up your ‘brand awareness’ then you don’t need to invest a lot of time if you have other time pressures. However you’ve got to do the minimum so that people don’t forget you.
these tips are one part, but i feel that the job of a good blogger is hard, he’s to first think of good content, then draft-edit it, and then get traffic to it. for good blogging one has to be an one-man organization which handles innovation,research and marketing all at the same time !