Image courtesy of Hakan Dahlstrom’s photostream
Even those of us who’ve never seen a game of professional NBA Basketball have probably heard the name “LeBron James” at least once over the past few weeks. The 29 year-old basketball phenom was set to make his “Decision” regarding what team he’d play for in the coming season and everyone was talking about it from New York to Los Angeles. With this kind of commotion, everyone took to social media to read the latest updates; some sports writers who were commenting on the topic received hundreds upon thousands of followers in just three days. Even those who weren’t big name journalists were on the receiving end of additional exposure on social media.
A co-worker of mine made a comment on the day LeBron chose his team that received nearly 100 retweets and follows on Twitter as a Cleveland sports station retweeted his post for all of their followers to see. I myself made simple comments on the content-driven Reddit that received over 300 likes.
The point isn’t that you need to follow the NBA or LeBron, but that by staying current in YOUR field in what you say on social media and staying relevant with new and interesting developments within your field to your circle of followers you can get attention and exposure from places you might not even have considered. A successful social media plan involves constant communication and on-topic conversations. If you’re in the print world, talk about some of the new and innovative things that come up, as a promo marketer, talk about the new and exciting ways you’ve discovered to reach out to contacts that are proving successful. Whatever field you’re in, if you are constantly communicating and interacting, you’re bound for more success than you might otherwise be by making comments in passing or simply retweeting posts from others (not to say these things don’t have their own value, if utilized correctly, you can use such tactics to improve the relationships with the followers you already have).
At the end of the day, people look at social media to connect with friends, discuss their own inputs on various topics, and read articles from people/organizations they consider to be thought leaders. If you aim to be the later of those three, and consistently work to build your following with well-thought-out communications strategies, you’ll find that big ugly “0” in the followers category begin to rise, and if you stay at it the sky is the limit.