Tommytrc’s Five Key Ingredients for Social Media Engagement – #’s 3 & 4

In our last segment, we learned about the first 2 key ingredients in social media engagement, Interaction and Sharing. For today’s installment, I talk about some items that may not be on your ingredient list, but should be.

Listening Many times, the most important ingredient for your master recipe is also the one that you are most likely to leave out. Kind of like the salt in your mom’s favorite chocolate chip recipe, “Why does something sweet need salt??” You may think that skipping this all-too important ingredient will not make any difference, but have you ever tried chocolate chip cookies sans salt? You get the picture. In social media, the top engagers are also the best listeners. It’s one thing to want your message heard, it’s totally another to listen to other’s messages. Like a great parent, favorite teacher, or school counselor, what makes them great is their listening skills. Many times it’s not what you say that is important, it’s the fact you give someone a listening ear.
The same holds true to social media.

Just like an IRL (In Real Life) conversation, listening is one of those ingredients that can make or break the interaction. A conversation without listening is just like mom’s chocolate chip cookies without salt. Do not forget to listen.

Moderation A great cook knows when to hang up her apron and leave the kitchen. Likewise, in social media sometimes you just need to log off, shut down and spend some quality time doing something else. I’m not talking about just going to bed either. You cannot be a top engager in social media if you are not engaged in real life. You cannot neglect your local friends. Things like local tweetups, local Twitter meet-ups, are great opportunities to network and build new friends, while also feeding your hunger for social media interaction. Locally, we have a pancake tweetup every other Friday at 7 a.m. This is a great way to put real faces to the Twitter avatars and talk more openly about issues and situations. These local interactions actually strengthen our Twitter relations because now you are true friends.

Tommytrc is a guest blogger for TDS. Follow him @tommytrc find his blog at http://tommylog.tommytrc.com/
Tommy is a tech geek, prepress and marketing guy, Mac head, PC guy too, — Overall Troublemaker – My motto to live by – Find out what sucks and don’t do that!

About Guest Blogger

Guest bloggers for the TDS Business Blog.

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