“The most important social media device is the person next to you”.
This line was one of the most important takeaways from @sree’s opening remarks at #smwknd 2016 @CUNYjschool @tkcuny. @sree was quoting David Carr (who also was known for saying that “social media is a listening opportunity, not simply a broadcasting one”).
If you weren’t at #smwknd (or following the presentations on livestream or the conversation on Twitter) here are 15 more takeaways to improve your social media game:
- Check your Twitter profile! Do you have a powerful headline, a solid headshot and a valid URL?
- Turn off the “saved media” on WhatsApp unless you really intend to save every gif/jpeg your relatives send to you on your phone.
- It is not who follows you who matter (according to @sree) its who follows who follows you who matter. On this point, checkout @Twiangulate.
- Good networking advice online and off: the only number of followers / connections that matter is — one — says @tamcdonald, that is, the one person you’re talking to.
- “How did people write resignation letters before Medium?” joked @sree to stress the point that you should be posting information where the crowds already are (after all, the scarcest resource these days is human attention h/t @leshinton). If you’re contemplating starting a blog do it on LinkedIn, Medium or even Facebook.
- If you don’t have a Will at least take care of nominating your Facebook Legacy Contact.
- On Facebook, change your relationship with your timeline by selecting up to 30 friends or pages “who to see first” in News Feed Preferences.
- Stop the scroll! Admit it, we all madly scroll through our social streams on mobile and by adding a picture or gif, your content becomes a #Thumbstopper (yes, this is why you don’t post directly from Instagram to Twitter — visual content stops the scroll, a link to an image does not). Apps to create a #thumbstopper include @typoramapp @canva @PicCollage @Waterlogue (plus find more cool multimedia mobile apps here).
- In a Snapchat world, emails still matter (The Met sends 72 million emails every year), so make sure your email marketing is quick, contains valuable content, has a unique voice / tone, is sent at a consistent frequency and where possible, delights or humors. Note to newsletter readers: Have I achieved this yet?
- Need an email coach? Check out Crystal Knows and/or subscribe to The Skimm (yes, they get the daily communication very very right).
- All of your social posts should contain some of these elements (says @sree):helpful, useful, timely, informative, relevant, practical, actionable, authentic, generous, credible, brief, entertaining, fun and occasionally funny.
- If you’re addicted to Emoji, personalize it with Bitmoji.
- Twitter allows you to determine length/duration of polls and yes, answers can be Emoji (ICYMI: voters are sent a notification when polls close so your original inquiry/tweet gets amplified, again).
- Twitter is likely subject to more speculation and rumors than any other social media platform, but here’s some truth: Twitter will stop counting photos, videos, polls and gifs against 140 character limit.
- Expert Twitter guidance: more than two hashtags looks like spam. Nuff said.
@NewYorker cartoonist @lizadonnelly captured the day’s insights in images — in case you need more than these 15 takeaways!
And last but not least, a little just for laughs on social media, check out #PixWithoutContext @NYTminuscontext @NoContextLouis
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