Had a great discussion with Linda Sevelius who shared her expertise on social media marketing with the students of University of Vaasa.
We touched upon many topics, one of which was, “Does a social media marketer need to be social to be successful?”. The answer would seem to be yes! But, we could nonetheless distinguish different extreme types (you could think of these as personas) of social media marketers, coming to a conclusion that there’s no single one way of being successful at it.
Here are some of the traits:
HYPERSOCIAL
- runs on inspiration
- engages with people online and offline
- directly communicates with followers (e.g., asking engaged users why they like the channel’s content)
- brave, thinks big
- content-first
- does not pay much attention to the “algorithm”, focuses on people
- spends active time in browsing feeds and interacting with others
ANTISOCIAL
- runs on data and analytics
- prefers sticking to numbers
- does not necessarily even read audience messages/comments
- focused on incremental improvements and gradual optimization
- numbers-first
- stays meticulously up-to-date on algorithm changes
- limits their own use of social media (“just here to do a job”)
Interesting is that being in the hypersocial type doesn’t mean you have to follow everyone and participate in every discussion. As Linda stated, you can (and should) be selective (and goal-oriented) in who you follow, what content you interact with, and how.
Also, we found examples of both types being successful and the conclusion was that an idea social media marketers incorporates aspects of both extremes.
Overall, it was a great discussion!