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Can it be that gaming social media sites is really the way to go?
You can find such a suggestion all over the place even today.
Sometimes it seems ethics is contrary to marketing.
Do you really have to “fake it till you make it”?
Legit blogs, bad advice
Many blogs that are considered legit marketing publications have disappointed me.
Why? They are spreading such “fake it ’till you make it” advice.
Marketers really suggest “to game” social media sites.
It’s wrong on many levels and people who follow it might even get banned.
Most importantly though such posts are the outcome of the wrong mindset.
It’s a mindset I call the SEO 1.0 mindset where people exploit social media.
In modern social SEO we are actively contributing to it in a positive manner.
Now who am I to call out such well known social media marketing bloggers like this?
Some people would perhaps refer to me as “power user“.
I have plenty (even 100k followers) on some social sites like X/Twitter or Pinterest.
Why? It’s due to my years of active participation there.
Fake it till you make it?
While marketers sound legitimate between the lines there is the “SEO 1.0 mindset” shining through.
The blogger will say something like: “the algorithm is a very smart one so you have to make it look what you are doing is pretty legit.”
This above sentence is a fundamental mistake.
When you attempt to pose instead of being genuine you’ll never be credible.
Sure you may go viral here and there and you may fool considerable audiences.
Yet for business users reliability and genuine conversations are key to build trust.
It’s about being a legit user. That is what makes you successful in the long run.
I never had to pose as a real user because I was from day one.
How to be genuine without posing
So how to become credible, reliable and ultimately trustworthy?
How you can accomplish that? Do not pose as, be genuine! Be authentic!
- Be yourself. Do not pretend to be someone else.
- Share what you really like not what you think others will like.
- Do not share only work stuff like business and marketing, share arts, photography, science pages as people on social media are mostly there to discover inspiring things not for business reasons.
- Express yourself freely. Do not sound like a bot.
- Do not share solely for numbers but for quality.
Now this is obviously a SEO blog so you probably wonder where the promotion comes in.
In social SEO we don’t do obvious, sneaky or creepy things.
The worst thing you can do is “posing as somebody else” self promotion.
Or wait – some individuals even pose as companies.
So when you’re a freelancer, be one.
When you are an employee represent that.
Do you lead a large company as an CEO? Be vocal about that!
It’s obvious. Isn’t it? Yet so many business people make basic social media mistakes.
Exploitation vs participation
Social SEO is not about exploiting social sites or people.
it’s about using tools to the max in accordance with the rules and to please the community.
Do not promote yourself to promote yourself! Be helpful and people will love you for that!
Conventional search engine optimization often is still about aggressive self promotion.
Modern social SEO relies on human nature and ages old behavioral patterns like reciprocity.
Those who give the most are the most popular. Many people reciprocate and give back.
The more accepted you get on social media the more people will trust and follow you and the more you’ll content gets shared.
Often I’m amazed at how even the least social media compatible posts at seo2.blog get shared and gain traction.
So unlike SEO for websites you can’t always predict social media success.
Especially going viral is often an ephemeral holy grail. Just be
- authentic
- genuine
- and helpful.
It’s often more than enough and usually you don’t need a huge audience.
Success can be some feedback, a few shares and comments by the right people.
Give people what they want
Some people who ask me to share or link their content feel obliged to reciprocate.
Then I always say “only if you really like it”. I don’t need an exchange or anything like this.
Also I never actively send instant messages to a group of people to share my content.
This way you’ll never know whether your content is truly popular or whether you just succeeded at artificially pushing it.
Next time you post similar content again because you think it is what people want and nothing happens.
You have to find a topic that most people are interested in. Such topics are of course:
- the social site itself
- humor
- Internet
- free tools
- pets
Some of my most popular shares with sometimes millions views covered those topics.
Examples of success and failure
The Internet lies post took me just an hour to write.
Yet it viewed more than 10k times with most people coming via social media.
The post successfully combined two popular topics: Internet and humor.
My social media friends largely ignored it btw. as it was not on topic enough.
Thus many posts remained unnoticed. Friends ignore them yet strangers are not intersted either.
For every hit there are a dozen misses. You are not popular every day all the time.
Audiences vary. Social media are oversaturated. People have limited attentions spans.
For the heroic reader I will disclose my mind boggling secret social media popularization tricks!
There are of course some techniques I use sometimes to speed up or enhance the process of being shared.
They are pretty common sense and are in not overtly self promotional but they work.
- You can announce a new post to my followers before it goes live.
- I will share my content just one site – where I have a stable following – and then people may notice them and spread them elsewhere.
- After getting shared I say thank you to each and every person who has shared my content.
- I often also ask a question to start a conversation around my content or the topic in general. I also do this with third party content I share whenever possible.
The key for success on social media sites is being known as a genuine user throughout several platforms.
It’s also about being able to cover topics everybody cares about.
Any artificial way of posing as someone else or feigning interest in other people will hurt you in the long run.
Don’t pose! Be genuine! It will pay off down the road! I’m still popular decades later!
* (CC BY-ND 2.0) Creative Commons image by Jared Keener