Get Better Results with Social Media When You Stop Focusing on ROI

There is more to social media marketing than just pushing your products and services. In fact, you actually generate more and better bottom-line results if you put your emphasis on building relationships with key people like targeted industry influencers and media sources.

Remember people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. So continue to nurture your existing relationships and focus on building new relationships with those who can help you spread your message—include them in your tribe.

Here are some tips to help you do this effectively:

• Identify who you want to know. Identify them by name and position if they work for a company. Create a profile about them that you can easily reference to help you remember their personality, what they like and don’t like. And most importantly, make sure that they would actually be interested in your product or service.
• Build rapport and offer value. Don’t just assume that because you mentioned them once and retweeted them months later that they will remember you. Be proactive about responding to them on various platforms, give them credit when you share their content, and send them information that may be of interest to them. Answer questions they ask and become a trusted resource. Reporters occasionally tweet requests for sources, so be there to lend a hand, even if you’re putting them in contact with someone else in your network. You want to become their go-to resource.
• Own that complement. When others say something amazing about your brand, products or services it is vital that you acknowledge them. Their words carry more weight than your words do so encourage them to be an advocate. Remember, before people will cite you, they need to trust you.
• Don’t use clickbait. Don’t try to trick users into clicking on your links by using misleading or manipulating headlines. Readers don’t like them and Facebook can detect them which means they will restrict your reach. Instead, be intentional about writing headlines that are clickable and tell the viewer what they will actually get. If you have a hard time with this, use a headline analyzer like CoSchedule.

Remember, quality is more important than quantity. How you engage with others gives and builds your reputation—it can build or break their trust in you. Be thoughtful, listen, be a resource, and share better content to build better and more valuable relationships which will happen over time.