When social media became popular for business, while marketing our own business, we liked and shared other pages, made a point of actually checking out the pages we liked and even communicating with the business owners, shared links, did shout outs and showed our appreciation of others. This seems to be a dwindling practise.
Most of you will agree that word-of-mouth and referrals are one of the best forms of business, and are also compliment or testimonial to the product/service we offer, so why don’t we do more of this for others. Social media is a great way to gain a little more exposure for our business, while showing appreciation of others, and spreading the word about other great businesses out there. Some of the ways you can do this include:
- liking a page
- sharing a link for a page/website
- checking into a place
- tagging a business
- visiting a page and leaving a recommendation
- doing shout outs to your favourite pages
- recommending pages to friends
- liking/commenting/sharing a post you like
Recently I joined the 21 Days of Gratitude Social Media Challenge, organised by Jo of Wildfire Social Media, and it has been a great reminder that as well as building and marketing your own brand, social media is about connecting, networking, building relationships, marketing your brand and your business as well as communicating with family and friends!
HOW DOES THE CHALLENGE WORK
- Start today or pick a day to start
- Choose your frequency and thank 21 people in your plan frequency (eg every day for 21 days, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for 7 weeks, or once for a week for 21 weeks etc)
- Select a person in your life to express gratitude to
- Choose your social network (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In etc)
- Share a message with image or video
- Tag the Event in your post to gain exposure beyond your network (or use the hash tag #21daysofgratitude)
- Create a new habit and plan to do this on a regular basis
It’s not too late to start, and there is no cost to you, but your commitment to take action. Join in the challenge at http://www.wildfiresocialmarketing.com/wildfire/21-days-of-gratitude-social-media-challenge
Whether you join the challenge or not, I encourage you to build more gratitude into your social media strategy, by including thank yous, recommendations, shout outs, tags, sharing links, liking/sharing posts, inviting friends to pages, and rather than liking a check in or shared link visit the page, check it out and like the page if it appeals to you (you may discover a new product/service you didn’t know existed, and if you do let others know about it too).