A very good friend of mine recently posted a blog on how his kids are not only better at using social media than him but also how we should look at them when learning how to use it. The blog is here for those who have a few minutes –http://www.pegasuspulse.com/consumer-health/kids-better-social-strategy/
HONEST KIDS
One of the take home points is that kids use social media in a very honest way. By this I mean they don’t really care about the things adults do, if something is good they like it. This is how various young internet stars have been born. They came with no previous celeb status, they just made videos and all of a sudden they are a YouTube star, or perhaps they just post cool things on Snapchat in an honest and fun way. The upshot is that the huge power they now have was pretty much earned naturally. This is a very big lesson for marketing agencies and businesses…earn the following don’t try and just buy it!
DISHONEST ADULTS
Where us grown ups seem to fall down is that we see the power, we see the success and then automatically look at how we can skip the hard work bit to make money. What marketing people now want to do is pick a random half celeb, pay them to use their products and spend lots of money trying to create a meaningful and popular social media platform around them. This will never be as good as the “real” social media successes because it is based on money and a product and not on popularity.
THE LESSON
For most small businesses the chance of employing a starlet of some kind is not even on the radar. But they do want to perhaps win, just a little bit, on social media. The lesson here is to do it through posting useful and engaging content and not hyped silliness. Think about who your audience are likely to be, think about what channels they use and speak to them directly. Share other people’s products or services you feel work well with your own, reach out to other people doing better than you and offer to work with them…there are lots of ideas. But above all, keep in mind the kids! Think about the fact they follow who is good and adults will do the same. Be good, be real, be useful and you may just end up being popular!
If this all makes no sense at all then just give us call and we can help. If it makes sense but you don’t know how to go about doing it….guess what? Give us a call!