Wherever I go to speak, entrepreneurs and corporate marketing professionals come up to me afterward and ask, “But what do we DO with social media?”
So, forget all the fancy plans; forget the ever-unsatisfying pursuit of ROI. Please just let this video sink in. Let this one thought permeate all that you do on social media. If you will, I guarantee you that you will discover exactly what you should DO on social media.
Here’s the foundational principle at work on social media:
- everyone wants to be heard
- everyone wants to be understood
- everyone wants to know his or her life matters.
You START that process by paying attention. On Twitter that starts by following the people who are following you. Period. It is just that simple. The next step is making social media about them, not you. And that starts by acknowledging their presence.
[Whenever I say something like this, someone with 250 followers will try to tell me they follow only people who add value to their own social media experience. I won't tackle the challenges with that argument in this post, but I would encourage you to seriously think through the value system that would produce such a conclusion.]
Please watch T.J. Thyne’s famous video and then notice the people around you: acknowledge & affirm—it’s how to win with social media and in real life, too.
PS. You are AWESOME!
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Love the post and the T.J.Thyne video Trey! Still letting it sink in!
Thanks Bernie.
When it comes right down to it, effectively using social media is simple: attend to, acknowledge, and affirm those around you.
Love it Trey
Trey,
Thanks SO much for sharing this. What a great production & what a great message. I was just making some notes yesterday about what I think are the most important ways social media can make a difference. Here's what I came up with:
1. Letting people know they aren't alone
2. Reminding people of how fabulous they are
3. Inspiring people to have some fun
4. Connecting people
5. Faciliatating collaborations
6. Broadening perspectives
Everyone has greatness inside, but sometimes we need a little push of encouragement before we can let it out.
A very good list.
Regarding your tweet question: What do I think we can do with social media? I'm one of those crazy people—I believe we have a unique opportunity to change the world. We have the chance to blast away artificial barriers between neighbors and redefine what it means to be a member of community.
Think of our natural patterns of connecting and relating in real life. Most of us spend most of our face-to-face time with people who look like, think like, act like, believe like, spend like, us.
Now think of how we can connect through social media.
Therein lies our opportunity to change the world—creating a world that's NOT zero-sum, but inclusive and caring.
Like I said, that probably relegates me to the “crazy” section of the Net.
Thank you for taking time to share.
Thanks Scott.
So proud of the work you and Drew Ellis are doing with LikeMinds. Y'all are meeting the needs of a huge community. Well done. Nokia & Orange were both quite smart to jump on board!
I love this Trey. And Jamie… I LOVE your list. That's exactly what I am about.
Thanks Amber.
I'm SO enjoying the pictures from your recent adventures.
Thanks for the video Trey!
Thanks Doug.
It's amazing how the simple things in life can be so important.
By the way, you're amazing! Why, because you're aggressively work to build a business throughout the state so your can put underutilized South Carolina talent to work on something worthwhile. That qualifies for a definite: “You're amazing.”
Have fun.
Thank you, Trey, for your dedication to helping everyone else and for sharing this story which captures the importance of doing that.
You and I met very briefly at the first LikeMinds event which you inspired and which Scott Gould and Drew Ellis organised. At the second event which they organised so well, four months later, you remembered me as if it were the next day.
At the end of that second event, a group of us were walking to a restaurant in Exeter. You were towards the front and had already entered the restaurant before I, near the back, informed another member of the group that I would not be able to join you all and was saying goodbye.
What happen next, even to this day, amazes me! You realised what was happening and made your way back out of the restaurant to say goodbye to me. I cannot tell you how much that meant to me then and now.
Your awareness and concern, at that moment when it mattered, motivated me to make my way back to see you again before you left at the end of that visit. This has led to us knowing each other better today.
The most amazing thing of all is that I have no doubt that hundreds and, possibly, thousands of other people have similar stories about you.
Trey, you are pretty amazing yourself!
Validated. Nice post.
dude…you are validated…
This is fantastic! It seems so simple, but can be so hard. The secret sauce really is this: Listen, share, care, and LOVE IT!
Thank you for sharing this Trey, it is now going into my “Mandatory” video library for EVERY single client I have.
You ARE awesome, and I LOVE IT!
Harrison!
this has always been one of my all time favorite videos! And it is so true – apply this there (social media)! Love the tie-in!
People often say to me “I just don't get {insert twitter, fb, or other}” I reply “Stop trying to get. Go look for opportunities to give.”
I usually get a really confused 'huh?” after that, but its a great way to start the conversation!
thanks for sharing your perspective
Thanks Kim. Now to validate my ticket to Portland sometime soon!
You, too. Thanks. I reckon we'll meet up on the speaking/conference trail someday. Maybe soon.
Thanks Harrison. Hey, great job on Coffee. Excited to hear you're moving it to “live” soon.
True, true. Funny how the expression, “I just don't get it,” says so much. “I” suggests the focus. “Just don't” implies an expectation that all things must work for satisfying my curiosity or informational demands. “Get” suggests the flow of benefits, and an expectation that they should flow to me. “It” can be anything just beyond our mental grasp.
It seems that it would be difficult to “get” social media without diving in to “give,” as you've noted. Intriguing.
Thanks.
Thanks John. I appreciate you recalling that encounter.
Took “Saved” with me to dinner tonight. Reading a little about the rescue. It's a fantastic story. That's for giving it to me.
You are very welcome. There are many parts of that story which might be of more or less interest for different reasons.
As you know, the particular aspect that we discussed, and that seemed so poignant, was about listening to something multiple times to remove multiple layers of noise and discovering, underneath it all, a faint sound from a person who needed to be rescued.
All the coincidences and effort that were involved both before and after that occurrence are potentially interesting too. They add to the drama and to the extreme good fortune of the whole rescue, and provide a much richer context; but they are to some extent peripheral to the point above.
I hope you enjoy whichever parts of the story interest you.
Trey, this is nothing short of brilliant! Thank you for the insight. I will most definitely pass it on.
You rock.
Perfect analysis!
By the way, your tweet led me here Harrison. thanks
Thank you Ted.
You know, it occurred to me that some brilliant political candidate might get a lot of mileage from lathering attention on his/her online community and then running a series of ads saying, “I can hear you now.”
I've been reading Carnegie's How to Make friends and influence people and realized how many of his principles are so similar to the principles you encourage when dealing with social media. Social Media should be like Carnegie says “Listening First and Selling Second” because like Erick Qualman says its a “people driven economy stupid”
Great stuff Trey, made my day and made me … smile
simple, incisive advice – Brilliant!
Thanks for an inspiring post!
Two questions from a twitter newbie: 1) do you really follow all your twitter followers? 2) once you follow hundreds (or thousands) of people how do you manage the information overload?
//Andrew
Thanks for reading and commenting.
To answer your questions:
#1 Yes, I follow back those who follow me. At the moment I'm following 84,486 and 85,287 are following me.
You should feel free to use Twitter any way you want to. If you personally don't want to follow people, that's up to you. Please do take a moment to think through what lies beneath whatever decision you make. If there's any hint of “I'm superior to others,” or “some people aren't worth my time,” I would ask that you consider where such a worldview is likely to take you between now and your deathbed.
If you're a politician, you have no excuse for disregarding the human beings who follow you on Twitter.
#2 Following 84,000+ is no burden at all. While I can't read every tweet in my tweetstream, I do read every @mention and every DM. I reply to nearly every @mention (I don't reply to the ones who are telling me “you're welcome” after I just thanked them. There is a logical, and socially acceptable “end” to a thread.)
Tools like TweetDeck and Hootsuite make it easier to manage.
Is it worth it?
In just a few minutes I'll get on a plane, fly to London, board a train for Scotland and enjoy a day of rest in Glasgow before speaking at Media140 Scotland. Friday night I'll connect with friends who are gathering in London to have a huge tweetup/dinner just because we're all around London at the same time. I'll spend the weekend in Bristol, where I'll speak Monday for Media140 Bristol. Tuesday to Friday I'll work directly with a client from Paris who's meeting me in London.
ALL of these things came about DIRECTLY through the involvement on Twitter. Nearly every speaking engagement I get comes through Twitter; every client I work with came about because of Twitter.
On top of that, there are numerous “little” details that have worked out on my behalf because of friends on Twitter.
Yes, it is absolutely worth it.
If you'll jump into Twitter, be determined to focus on others, attend to them, give them what you can to help them, you'll be amazed at the harvest that'll produce in your life.
Don't keep score and don't give to get. Give and just be prepared to be surprised.
Whatever you do, don't look at your fellow human being as someone you can “get” something from. American companies worship at the god of “what's in it for me.” That god is now dumping plague after plague upon us.
Thank you Chris. I'm so looking forward to Bristol with you! Thank you for sorting out the massive details to make Media140 Bristol a reality.
Thanks Yann. Thank you, too, for rallying folks at Orange for my aid. You and they have come through with flying colors.
Thanks Alex.
You're so right. We look at Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and we will the world has somehow changed. We think we need a new strategy (or, as Huey Lewis would say, a new drug).
Carnegie said it well, “Be genuinely interested in the other man.”
Trey,
I can totally understand your perspective. Every person needs and deserves a voice. This post made me laugh, however, because it is completely contradictory to a recent post by Andy Sernovitz, another of my favorite thought leaders. He says, “There is no such thing as “Twitter Debt,” and warns people not to take those who don't follow back too seriously. This isn't, after all, a new kind of work. It's supposed to be fun.
I understand both opinions, and I think what it really boils down to is your purpose for using social media.
I am a firm believer that truly successful people in the social sphere (those who get the most value out of it) are those who give without expectation of receiving, and those who listen before they speak. Those simple principles are obviously manifested in the above video, on your blog and throughout your personal philosophies. I truly admire you for that.
I look forward to more excellent ideas, opinions and life lessons from you! (Officially subscribed to your blog, thanks to Ted.)
Good point. I actually agree with Andy. In a reciprocal relationship there are, of necessity, two sides (at least). I believe Andy and I are writing about the separate sides.
Side One: Whom do I follow?
Answer: Everyone who follows me.
Side Two: Who follows me?
Answer: who ever wants to; if I follow someone and they don't follow back, I can either unfollow them or not worry about it. The not worrying about it option seems to work well.
Now to the deeper issue, and the drum I beat. Our fellow human beings are hungry, starving (in general, not EVERYONE fits here). The substance they crave we can easily give: Attention, acknowledgement, affirmation.
It is such a low cost to say, “Yes, I see you” when a fellow guest of Earth says, “Do you see me? Do you know I'm here?”
I'll keep calling people to attend to their neighbors. Whether people do or not is, of course, entirely up to them.
Don't know if you had a chance to see the reply to Andrew. There I acknowledged follow/follow back preferences are individual choices. My appeal is for folks to ponder the worldview driving those choices.
It could be some folks feel they can GIVE more value if they focus on a few. I've had the honor of being with special education teachers. Those amazing beings are able to work wonders with one, or two, or maybe six young people at a time.
In that setting, within the contextual meleu surrounding it, focus on the few is necessary.
Maybe there's a similar correlation for the contextual meleu for some on Twitter, too. At the moment, it escapes me, but no doubt such a confluence of factors require limited affirmation on Twitter. Could be.
From my direct, and sometimes confrontational encounters with politicians, for instance, the worldview behind their NOT following people back makes me shudder.
I think you're exactly right in your conclusion: success is closely follows a focus on giving vs. getting.
Thank you so much for taking time to comment and to shine a different light on the topic. THAT's what constantly amazes me about social media: it opens wide the doorway to the intense richness of diversity.
You're also so right about Andy. He's a treasure for our times for sure.
Thank you for officially subscribing! I hope to see you IRL soon.
Hi Trey,
Hadn't seen the video before…thanks for sharing. It would be awesome if more people and businesses got into the 'giving a crap' game!
Ed
My pleasure. Glad to pass it along.
Nice post Trey.
“You START that process by paying attention.” Completely agree.
Most mornings I have a look through my stream, find out what others are up to and try to help where I can. It is amazing how the days when you think Twitter has been great and full of productive conversations are the days when YOU make the effort in the first place.
Enjoy the rest of your stay in the UK
Rob
Thank you Robert.
It is truly amazing to see the law of the harvest at work all around us.
Thoroughly enjoying your country. Bristol is splendid. I could walk for days along the waterfront. Mornings/evenings are picturesque.
We'll be skydiving in Devon the next time I'm around. Are you up for that?
Trey
Bristol is a great city in so many ways, with beauty being one of them
Thanks for asking and count me in – always wanted to do a skydive!
Rob
Trey,
Talk about like minds, I posted a post with this last Feb and then another one last year on two separate sites. Here is one http://socialmediaforsmartpeople.com/validation...
You articulated it more completely, I left it open for folks to chime in their experiences. I am still learning from you on how to get people to engage online. Thanks for bring your unique specialness.
Amen! …. REALLY beautiful!
PS: How is Peti LOL!!
Fantastic video and a great reminder of the power of validation. Thanks Trey,
Kate
Thanks Michele. Good stuff.
This video is truly a classic.
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