10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Ten

10. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

Your success in social media may be dependent in large measure on what you have to share with others, but how you come across – your online persona – is also very important.    

Whether you’re on Facebook or YouTube, tweeting or blogging, you need to be as affable as you are knowledgeable, as charismatic as you are smart. You need to lighten up.

Sure, many of the most effective social media practitioners are opinionated and authoritative, natural born leaders at the top of their fields. But if you take a closer look, you’ll find that they’re also easygoing and deferential, not afraid to share some of their personal lives with their professional peers. They’re approachable and responsive, people who are comfortable having impromptu, informal conversations with a diverse range of constituents.

As I said before (Blog Post on Video: The Three A’s of Social Media Branding)…

Skills alone will only get you so far in social media. You need to humanize your brand identity. Those who are most popular in social media are those who have the best bedside manners, the most engaging personalities.  They are amiable and congenial, generous and kind, people who are as good at listening as they are teaching, as humble and humorous as they are confident in their abilities.

Yes, when all is said and done, social media won’t work very well for the aloof or the arrogant, those who play their hands close to the vest and can’t crack a smile. Social media works best for those who take their work, not themselves, seriously.

This is the tenth in a 10-post series on how to succeed in social media. I’ll be publishing the entire series as one long post and/or possibly even an eBook soon. If you have any feedback on either this post or the entire series, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks.

Previous Posts in This Series…

10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part One
Adopt the right company culture.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Two
Set realistic expectations.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Three
Create enough quality content.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Four
Stand for your brand.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Five
Work as a team.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Six
Leverage a number of channels.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Seven
Overcome the social media “dip.”
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Eight
Educate others more than you promote yourself.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Nine
Measure the results of your activities.

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4 thoughts on “10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Ten

  • Great post, Bob! I completely agree with what you are saying. When I first started off using Twitter, for example, I found myself worrying about every tweet I sent out, making sure it was correct and professional. While this was important at first for building my professional presence on Twitter, I then realized I had to interact with people and get to know them. Now I am more comfortable being both professional and having my true personality shine. People need to lighten up and show some personality in their social updates. If someone follows me and I am deciding whether I want to follow back or not, I usually check their recent tweets, and one thing I check for is if they converse with others and show some type of social media personality.

  • Yeah, social communication is more casual and open. I think people research the SM networks to see that other side of you. My most commented on tweets and blog posts are not “work-related.” There’s a line of course, but its not hard to be interesting and fun, and still be professional.

  • Hi Bob!

    I cannot agree more. We are bombarded every single day with message after message. It’s so much that many of us routinely flip past commercials, mute them or otherwise minimize them when we’re watching television, and we ignore popups and skyscraper ads when online because we’re sick and tired of it all.

    Hence any way that a person with a message can differentiate themselves is a good thing. Humor and authenticity are huge. We’ve all gotten loads of corporatespeak in our lives. This is not to say that courtesy is dead — far from it! But it doesn’t hurt my business model one iota if I let it slip that I’m a Red Sox fan or am having trouble getting my grape vines to produce (I am …). In fact, I think it all helps. Great post!

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