I like to provide a lot of social media and social networking strategies to people, but what is it that really makes all that time and effort posting and sharing your content really effective? Social Networking Karma! So what is Social Networking Karma and how can you use it to make your online social networking more effective? I’m going to explain how your way of “being” and acting impacts the effectiveness of your social networking. The best sites to social network on, right now away, are Facebook and Twitter. Most everyone has a presence on those sites and spends the vast majority of their time there checking status updates and tweets. So obviously that’s where you should be hanging out primarily in order to touch as many contacts and friends as possible with your own content. Online forums are also great places to post and interact with others. If you know me, you know that I advocate posting a lot of original content on a frequent basis, and then sharing/syndicating your content socially through networking and bookmarking. But in order to make it really kick in and work for you you have to have a really loyal base of friends and followers that are willing to interact with your content and share it themselves. The way to achieve that is through pro-actively interacting with other people’s content and status updates so they become more likely to interact with yours.
I don’t think most people by nature are inclined to interact with other people’s postings socially unless they are really close to that person or find it super-compelling, so the way to overcome peoples’ lack of willingness to respond in some way to your postings is to interact with their postings first! I know this sounds somewhat commonsensical, but I know from social networking for several years that it just doesn’t happen by itself. I spend part of every morning, usually first thing, scanning through my Facebook status updates looking for anything I can either Like, Comment on, or Share on my Wall. I also go back to Facebook throughout the day to check all the new postings so I can interact. Since I’m connected to quite a few people and follow a lot of Fan Pages, it isn’t hard to find informative or interesting postings to interact with. You have to decide what you want to interact with and what you don’t. I don’t think everything should be interacted with, but definitely what’s appropriate in your mind. If it’s business oriented I usually interact with it. Family stuff sometimes but far less frequently because I’m using Facebook with business goals in mind. Every time I engage with someone else’s postings I build a little but more Social Karma with that person, making them more likely to reciprocate and interact with my postings, which increases my content’s exposure to their friends. Not to mention they like me personally a little more because I took the time to interact with their posting. Similarly on Twitter, I scan the updates and look for interesting posts I can retweet or reply to. Every time I do this I gain a little bit more social karma with people, making them more likely to interact with my stuff which gains additional exposure.
Social Networking in general tends to have a positive, upbeat tone to it, so when you are interacting with other people’s content or posting your own, you should do it with a really upbeat and friendly nature. No one wants to read depressing posts or be interacted with negatively, it’s just human nature. The nice thing about social networking is it’s really a great opportunity to uplift, encourage, motivate, and reinforce others acheivements and accomplishments, so definitely make sure to chime in when you see great stuff happening for your friends and followers. And if the news isn’t good then you can comfort and be there for them in your response. It’s also a great opportunity to show people that you aren’t selfish since you took the time to respond their posting. I think most people get so caught up in posting their own content and thoughts that they don’t take the time to interact with other peoples postings. But if you make a concerted effort to proactively interactive with other people’s content you will find them interacting with yours, which will make your efforts more effective! In fact, you should spend MORE time interacting with others than posting your own content. That’s as plain as I can say it. I hope you liked this little mini-article on social networking karma…now go out and make it happen!
