Building a social media brand and influence takes years. There is no magic bullet or ‘one’ thing to do to increase following and awareness. It must be a coordinated approach doing a number of different things as I wrote about recently.
But I did do just one thing that I noticed made a difference, and that was to send a tweet and Facebook post asking to connect with people of like interest. And it worked! I had a 3% – 7% increase in Twitter followers and Facebook likes within 48 hours. And page views of my blogs were about 25% stronger than normal.
I sent the following two messages – one for my SAZ in the Cellar wine brand and one for my InkIT Publishing writing and publishing brand. The two posts were:
- For InkIT: “Want to connect with people serious about #writing, #publishing, #technology #socialmedia / related topics. Want #quality, #notquantity.”
- For SAZ: “Want to connect with people serious about #wine, #food, #writing, #winewriting, #technology, #socialmedia. Want #quality, #notquantity.”
Each post was scheduled in Hootsuite and sent to appropriate channels. The multiple #hashtags worked to find new people, and the sincerity and open request seemed to work well also. I plan to do this every several months or so in the future to continue to build my social media presence and recommend you do something similar using #hashtags for topics relevant to you.
Steve Shipley, author of Wine Sense, due out early 2014
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Still Stupid at Sixty (published under my writing pseudonym Blake Stevens)
