Listen, once you figure out how to effectively and consistently increase brand awareness on social media the heavens will still, money will grow on virtual trees and success-sized checks start rolling in…

Can we be honest for a second please? Here’s the truth: breathe, social media isn’t some magic bullet. Are there a fair amount of companies out there that focus almost their entire marketing strategy on social media hubs? Yes, definitely. Isn’t there some recipe you can follow and mimic that makes it easy? No, absolutely not.

Authentic Human Engagement

No salesmanship. No sales-speak. And keep pure product/service promotion to a minimum. In fact, you should only try to “sell” someone something or ask them for something roughly 10% of the time. The other 90% should be spent on establishing AUTHENTIC human engagement. Here are some examples.

Find a relevant or related brand, person, product or company’s page on a social media platform you have a presence on and…

• Instigate a genuine conversation around customer needs.
• Thoughtfully contribute to a conversation taking place.
• Actively prompt buzz around recent and developing news.
• Leave comments of appreciation/props on other people’s content.
• Endorse, cheerlead and stimulate virility around associative causes, non-profits.
• Hunt down a really nice blog on a relative subject, contribute to the conversation in the comments section, then share the blog on your social media platform.

If you’re in charge of social media marketing for a lean-startup, set a goal to make at least one authentic and genuine connection with an ideal customer on social media every day Monday through Friday.

Creating Content to Attract the Masses

So, on one hand you’ve got all the “activity” stuff in the list above and any other creative way you can think of to reach through the digital divide and make connections. On the other you can create your own content and then use “activity” methods to spread it (along with your brand) around.

The trick is understanding each culture. Facebook has one. Instagram has one. Pinterest has one. Vine, Tumblr, Twitch, Instagram, and on and on. Then, each little niche market within these sites has its own tribe. So, with that said, if you’re reading this blog post right now you need to…

“Study the crap out of your primary social media hub until you fully understand what works and what doesn’t!”

Let’s say you’re a small business that sells homemade jelly or something and you want to focus on Instagram. Cool. Then you need to…

• Study, study, study, study similar brands, popular people within the niche, mega-active profiles with legions of followers, etc.
• Design a consistent content strategy, say 2 unique quality shots of your jelly creatively displayed with food, foodie backdrop, etc.
• Cordon off time 3-5 days a week where you can do nothing but actively go out and engage other people on Instagram: like their stuff, leave comments, contribute to conversations or start them, cheerlead others, etc.

Cool? Getting the picture here? In a way you could say there is a formula but you’ve got to discover it. No one can just inject it into you through words alone. Get out there, study the successful brands, engage people on a human level without sales and promotion, and learn to create the type of content that works.