You're a Jerk (I Know)

It sounds like common sense, but just like deodorant, people who need it the most tend to never use it. So, let me just go out and say it: if you want your business to succeed and want to enhance your social media presence, don't be a jerk. The key to a meaningful social strategy is to be genuine with your posts and your interactions. After all, social media is just that: social. By definition, "social" is characterized by "friendly companionship or relations." Interactions among social beings. Engagement between multiple parties participating. We are inherently social. Why can't our Twitters, Facebooks, Instagrams, etc be too?

This isn't the time to pelt your consumers with an overly branded compilation of stuff like they are some kind of human dart board. Companies doing it right have found that being genuine and talking about what the consumers want to talk about drives engagement and results in better conversation.

If you just realized that you are in fact being a slimy jerk with your social media efforts, that's okay. The first step to recovery is acknowledging that you actually have a problem. Here are several steps to save you from the depths of social media suicide and bring you into the light.

1. Give and take. It is a delicate balance between the two. Finding a happy medium is vital.
2. Find a personality. Having a personality to your social media presence will make it easier to turn a non human technology into a human one.
3. Connect and care. You can't always be the center of attention. Make a connection and build off of that. People love to talk about themselves.