Why Social Media Peeps Are Like Babies*

Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

As you may or may not know I am currently in the UK working remotely while staying with family.  Over the last few weeks I have spent a lot of time looking after my baby niece who is 11 months old.  She is lovely (most of the time) and I have to say often makes me laugh.

Note: This isn’t my niece, it’s a Flickr baby

One thing that she does (which if you have children you probably know about) is copy other children.  We were in the library for story time last week sitting round a table next to 6 and 7 year old girls, all the girls leaned on the table on their forearms to be closer to the librarian reading, and so did my niece (who was sitting on my lap).

Obviously my niece thought leaning on the table was the done thing as 3 other big girls were doing it and so blindly copied them.  I have noticed the same thing happening online…..

Online everyone is busy trying to find that secret ingredient that will make their business fly (usually with minimal amount of work) and when they see something that they think works for someone else they will blindly copy it without thinking it through….  Now ok, lets be fair maybe “blindly copying” is a bit harsh, maybe others would say that they “aren’t reinventing the wheel”.  But whichever way you look at it there is really NO POINT in doing something just because someone else is.  IT HAS TO WORK FOR YOU.

There are principles of marketing and social media that apply to everyone such as,

• know your audience
• play where your audience play
• be real
• be consistent
• add value
• be relevant

But HOW you execute that for you is a whole other story.  What works for one product may not work for another, what works for a service business may not work for a product business.

I am not saying don’t take inspiration from what others are doing, but I am saying think about it before you do it.

What to think about:

• Will my audience respond to that?
• Will they like it?
• Does it fit with my brand?
• Is it relevant?
• Does it help me meet the objectives I have, e.g. increasing your newsletter database
• Do I have the skills/resources to do it well?
• Do I have the time to do it well?
• Am I doing it just because I like it? rather than because it works for the business
• Does it meet the industry/online/marketing rules and regulations I am bound by?