4 Ways To Actually Get Ahead Of The Other Guys In The Social Arena

Social media is a cliche these days. People know they need to "be on it" and they know they need to "get serious about it", but when push comes to shove very few people are giving their channels proper attention. It makes sense, too, results are generally slower on social but they come with the added earned bonus of often building more loyal customers.

Additionally, customers simply expect more of the brands and people that they choose to do business with these days, and communicating in a personal manner is part of that expectation. So, besides just "being there," here are a few tried and true tips for social growth from the guys and gals at the top.

1) Keep your social making sense for each platform

Make sure that the social you put out isn't lazy. Specifically, don't use the autoshare feature to other platforms just because it exists. If it looks like you don't care about creating anything actually interesting on your Facebook page because every single post is an automatic copy of a post from Instagram, it makes the value of being on Facebook pretty negligible: If it's clear you don't care about your page, why should other people care to interact with it, let alone click through on your more promotional posts?

2) Try out a new platform at every opportunity

Yeah, a lot of platforms flop, but do you know how well the first few people who started doing really well on Instagram did? Or the first 10 people to start 'funny meme' type pages on Facebook? Early adopters have the chance to make an absolute killing on social, so it's worth spending a couple of weeks or even months trying out new things as they come along. If something becomes the next Twitter or Snapchat after you laughed it off a year ago, you're not going to be happy with yourself.

3) Reply to everything

People love feeling appreciated, so make sure you take advantage of this psychological trigger in your social interactions. If someone has opted to tweet at you, or send you a message somewhere, they've basically opened the door for you to have a free interaction with them and start building a rapport - take advantage of it!

Plus, you never know whose eye you've caught and what opportunities might arise from taking the time to get back to them. That alone makes it worth taking the chance - if a big shot caught something of yours, paying attention to them for 10 seconds might just land you a huge opportunity.

4) Have a better schedule than the next guy

Of course, you can't go wrong with being better organized than the guys and gals you're competing against. Seriously, too many people "wing it" in social. Instead, try to source content for 3-7 days out. When you release original content, use a tool like CoScheduler to have it shared every week or two for the next several months.