3 Mindset Shifts to Make When Approaching Social Media

A few simple mindset shifts can be the key to unlocking success for you or your brand on social media.

They may be challenging and require patience, but they are crucial in getting you out from beneath the shadows and to getting noticed.

#1 Shoot From the Brain and Not From the Hip.

Average leaders dismiss social media as unimportant or an afterthought. But this couldn't be farther from the truth.

Social media is "the trenches" and quite literally a form of direct communication with your audience. Intentionality and care required.

Shooting from the brain looks like being as strategic and intentional with your social media as you are other aspects with your business.

An “anything goes” mindset can lead to not being thoughtful and forget your purpose for being on social media in the first place.

#2 Treat your followers with dignity and respect.

Every follower is a person. You may feel discouraged by a low follower account, but if it is larger than 0 than someone is waiting to hear from you. What will you say if they were in the room?

Before you start reaching for a larger audience, focus on who is listening right now.

A popular (and wrong) social media tactic some implore is mass-engagement These methods look something like:

• Follow / Unfollow – Following mass quantities of people in hope of a follow back, only to unfollow them later on.
• Automating (often irrelevant) comments on others posts.
• Paying for a service where robots like and comment to mass audiences.

How does this affect your audience? How do people from the outside see your brand? These are ways that we would never market our businesses or brands offline.

As a first impression of your business or brand, start off right by treating followers with dignity and respect.

#3 Provide Real Value.

If you're going to provide value to your followers, you must first identify who they are and what do they want.

If they were at your event, dinner party, or store-front, what kind of conversations would you be having? This should provide insight into your social media content calendar.

Quick Tip: Especially when starting out, focus posts around one specific subject. A surefire way to stunt engagement is to share off-topic information that isn't related to your audiences core desire.

Stay focused! Your audience's interest will fatigue far later than your own. Share from your expertise and experiences around what your followers want. You'll start to see that the reward for your efforts. (And believe me, it will outlast the momentary satisfaction of the bots and fake-followers.)