Two years ago, a Facebook prank made me stop underestimating the power of the social media. I had read a lot about the Social media’s marketing power at the time, but I still took it for granted and certainly didn’t exploit it as an entrepreneur, not to its fullest anyway.
A friend had tagged me under the comments in an update on Facebook, and she had said, “Chidike I didn’t know you had a twin”. The post was the pre-wedding shoot of a couple; the man bore a distinct resemblance to me, though I didn’t agree at the time. I and my elder had got into an argument as to whether or not the man in the picture resembled me enough to be mistaken for me.
So as a test, I posted the picture on my Facebook timeline, but I wasn’t prepared for the response I got, especially because everybody around me and everybody that knew me hadn’t even gotten a suggestion from me that I was getting married
The biggest lesson I learned that day was that social media wasn’t just making the world smaller, Social media is becoming the world as we know it. These personal Lessons will help you get just why it is important to do this just right.
1. Engagement requires you to be engaging.
I had a decent following on social media and a ton of friends and friends of friends, but I had no idea how many people actually saw my posts. We tend to rate the level of exposure our social media marketing efforts get by the number of conversions or at least, likes, comments and shares, but this experience taught me how inaccurate that assessment was.
In about 10 minutes after I posted that photo it showed up in all of Whatsapp groups with congratulatory messages, sandwiched in between rebukes of neglect. I received about 15 personal chats and my mother even heard that I was getting married! I was so alarmed that I had to call my fiancee to tell her before she got a call from someone else. The post itself plus my subsequent disclaimer got a deluge of likes and comments.
The lesson is simple — the social media is very capable of exposing your efforts. The question is, are your efforts engaging enough to precipitate engagement from the silent majority? It was a “eureka” moment for me in my personal business…
