Please #Like Me Today

How do we get someone to like what we are doing on social media? Is it the same in person as it is on social media or is there something else going on?

We all want to be liked, unless, of course, you are the Grinch or Kevin O’Leary on Shark Tank! But even they, or so we’d like to believe, use their abrasive and unlovable characters as a shield to the liking and approval that they really crave (yeh, right!).

The ‘like’ has become an important element of social media and it has evolved to signify, not just approval, but the fact that someone is viewing and engaging with our content, whether shared or authored. More importantly, it is a reasonable indicator that it is being read, whether fully or in part, and so it is also a useful metric as to whether your social media content is hitting the right audience.

Thumbs up

It is interesting that the iconography of liking is the ‘thumbs up’ symbol: it comes from the gladiatorial arena, where the thumbs down was considered to be the signal that the victor was being given the assent to dispatch the losing combatant. Some controversy surrounds the idea that the thumbs up, by default, meant that the loser was being granted life, but popular cinema has embraced that idea and so has wider society and particularly the world of social media.

In some non-Western societies, however, the thumbs up varies from being offensive to positively vulgar. Nevertheless, the thumbs up seems here to stay and represents the fact that I virtually like what you have done or shared, regardless of its real origin or meaning.

What does the giver get out of it?

The giver, for want of a better term, is expressing their approval for the content that you produced or for something that you shared. It is also seems to be some form of agreement, because the giver is more likely to hit that ‘like’ button, if you have provided something that accords with their own pre-existing viewpoint or that they agreed with after having read it.

Posts and articles that are somewhat controversial seem to get lots of views and generate plenty of comments, but encourage fewer likes. Slightly more upbeat and positive messages seem to be more likely to encourage the reader to hit ‘like’.

The passive act of liking

Beyond just viewing the post on LinkedIn, liking is the most passive act in terms of responding to a post. Nevertheless, it does flag up on your timeline, and that of your connections and followers, and so it is a form of recommendation and in practice it plays a similar role to actually sharing the article.

It is evident, however, that some followers will like your content without venturing further than the headline and the brief segment that appears on the timeline. It would seem that the motivation of the latter may be in generating attention to their own content and profile, which is another strategy altogether.

What does the receiver get?

Perhaps, to get slightly psychoanalytical for a moment - on the premise that ‘you are what you share’ on social media - so we also take it as personal validation and acceptance of who we are. Getting liked makes us feel good about ourselves and our place in this virtual world of social media amongst a global audience of connections and followers - the overwhelming majority of whom we will never meet in person. But I think I am getting too deep here and this is a post for another day.

"Likes bring attention to what we are sharing"

Ultimately, likes bring attention to what we are sharing. The author sees their viewings increase and this leads to an upward spiral of further likes and comments, which on LinkedIn will flag your content as interesting and relevant and should then see it picked up by the algorithms, from where we see it promoted more widely on Pulse and featured in various channels. This leads onto a virtuous upward spiral of likes, comments and shares, until that post, which was originally read by a few of your regular followers, has now circled the globe to a worldwide audience.

How do I get more likes?

These are my recommendations for getting more likes:

1. Stay away from controversy – write about things that make people feel good about themselves or that help them to achieve their goals. Controversial subjects may make for interesting reading and if it is comments you are after, you will probably generate more of these, rather than likes.
2. Give the reader a call to action – ask them a question and invite their views on what you have been talking about. Engagement spans the passive to the active and so the more they are encouraged to respond, the more they will probably give you a thumbs up.
3. Post regularly – if you develop a regular readership of followers, they will develop a predisposition to like and approve of your writing and your viewpoint. These fans will provide the early likes that will propel you up the virtuous cycle of likes, comments and shares.
4. Share-ability - does the content have currency in terms of addressing a topic that is currently hot, trending, and worthy of sharing with your fellow connections? Is it something that you might share with your followers if you chanced upon it in your timeline?
5. Tap into personal experience or expertise - followers like to feel that you are sharing something that has come from your personal experience or expertise, so if you can relate the points that you are making to anecdotes and stories, then the more your readers may relate to what you are saying and like the message.

Or failing that, try and post a desperate attention-grabbing headline asking for people to, "Please Like Me Today?"

Will Trevor is the Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training. Please click 'Follow' if you would like to hear more from Will in the future. Feel free to also connect via his Linkedin page, or via Twitter and Facebook or email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

Other recent and popular posts by Will:

4 Ways to Give Effective Criticism at Work

Job Interviews: Don't Take it Personally

10 Reasons Why Psychologists Believe You Make Bad Decisions

Is It Time to Ditch the Elevator Pitch?

5 Things I have Learned from Being a Mentor

Picture Credit: (1) https://flic.kr/p/7mCUm2 Host Kevin O'Leary by Ontario Chamber of Commerce; (2) https://flic.kr/p/t3axY Police Verso by Jean-Léon Gérôme by Michael Hellemann; (3) https://flic.kr/p/8GRb26 give by Tim Green; (4)https://flic.kr/p/bjxwu8 Like Book by Mark JP (5) https://flic.kr/p/paD19y Ethiopian Tribes, happy Mursi boy by Dietmar Temps; (6) https://flic.kr/p/a1V3bz A Morrissey Crowd by by A Lads Club Escapette

Why Do your Contacts Stop Following You on Social Media?

This article looks at 7 reasons why you might be losing followers on social media, such as LinkedIn, and asks whether you should be worried about it and what you can do about it if you are

Parents and psychologists will tell you that children can be seriously traumatized by being 'unfriended' on Facebook, or other social media, and the word has even passed into the dictionary to signify an abrupt cessation of friendship. Whilst as businesses we might not need counselling for our separation anxiety over the loss of a contact, we do need to consider how and why it is happening and whether we need to do something about it.

Sometimes you're up, sometimes your down

With a large number of connections and followers, I do notice that on a daily basis there can be some fluctuation in the numbers, most of the time it is in the upwards direction, but sometimes you spot that you've lost one. In Twitter it's easy to spot, because applications such as JustUnfollow allow you to track this, but it is less easy to identify on LinkedIn, unless you have a small number of contacts and you know who they are.

So what are the 7 reasons why we sometimes lose followers?

My focus here is on the individual LinkedIn or Twitter account, rather than the large corporate social media machine:

#1: 'Over-sharing'

This is the social media equivalent of "too much information"! 'We are what we share' and people will make judgements about us as a connection, by the type and quality of things that we 'like' and distribute on social media. Over-sharing has entered the lexicon as suggesting we are distributing too much stuff that is not relevant to all or some of our contacts. Some contacts will take exception to what they judge to be 'over-sharing' and unfollow you as a result.

#2: Inappropriate Sharing

Some of your contacts will have a fairly fixed perception that LinkedIn, for example, is a business social platform and if you share too many amusing pictures or you ask them too many times to 'solve this if you are a genius', then they may actually reciprocate by un-following you.

#3: Follow/Unfollow

This is specific to Twitter and it's a conscious strategy to build a large following by avoiding the platform's follower limits and encouraging contacts to follow them, by following you first and then un-following you later. It's a brutal, but sometimes effective strategy, for those who want to build a list of connections fast and they're not bothered how they do. You can often spot the follow-unfollow practitioners by the fact that they start following you and yet they have a disproportionately large number of followers compared to the number they themselves are following. Do you follow?

#4: Open/Closed Network Ethos

Open networkers tend to view social sharing as something that is beneficial with as large and diverse a group of contacts as possible. The trade-off is that you may receive postings and messages that aren't entirely relevant to you, but you accept that as part of the territory. Closed networkers, on the other hand, tend to view their social networks as part of their inner circle and they are less tolerant of accepting invites from people they don't know or receiving messages that they feel are irrelevant to them.

#5: "Spring Cleaning"

You may simply lose followers because they have closed their account, moved to another job and can't access their old profile, or they've passed away, or even ceased to see social media as relevant to them. It's inevitable, so I wouldn't worry about it.

#6: You've upset them somehow

You remember that guy from the office whose name you can't quite remember and who you ignored at the Christmas party, well now he's getting his own back in the only passive-aggressive way he he knows how. And, you know what, he secretly hopes you'll notice too! Don't worry about it.

#7: You're a Spammer!

Probably one of the most heinous and unforgivable crimes that anyone is capable of on the Internet: sending large volumes of unwanted and unrequested posts, messages, or emails, without the consent and permission of your contact. Expect to be unfollowed if you do this! However, what constitutes spamming, can be interpreted fairly broadly and you may find that one person's spammer is another's beneficial sharer.

Should you be worried?

If you are actually haemorrhaging followers, then you have got a serious problem and you need to do something drastic, but chances are that you might be engaged in #7, so you are getting what you deserve! The numbers you will lose from #5 'Spring Cleaning' and #6 'because you have upset someone' - unless you make a habit of it - should be mercifully small.

If you lose someone because they have more of a #4 'closed network ethos', then you may have overstepped the mark and they've unfollowed you as a result. On Twitter, #3 'follow/unfollow' practitioners can be spotted very easily by looking at the follower-following ratio and it's only a problem if you are particularly bothered by it.

The 'Sin of Over-sharing'

Finally, there is 'oversharing' and sharing inappropriate content. This, however, boils down to the basic truism of marketing: 'know your audience'. If you have a range of contacts with whom you are familiar and you know that they like the amusing stories and the pictures that you send, then there's no harm, unless you've judged it wrong and they're heading for the exit! 'Oversharing' is another subjective judgement and it's almost a polite way of saying that you think someone is a spammer. If they really are uninterested in the content that you are sharing and, providing it is appropriate and not excessive, then they may have very little relevance as a connection anyway and may not be such a great loss.

What can I do about it?

So if you are worried by it, here's 5 Golden Rules that might just save you from being 'Billy-no-Mates' on social media:

1. Know your audience and share what you and they like.
2. Don't treat it as a one-way street - engage with the content of your connections, as you would expect them to engage with yours.
3. Expect that you will lose some contacts, because it's inevitable, but don't become obsessed by trying to find out who they are or why they've done it, because you'll just go crazy!
4. Try and keep the amusing stuff, and the mathematical conundrums, to a minimum and largely for Facebook!
5. Accept that social media is about 'give and take' and use it to further your contacts, but remember to help others and you'll be surprised how willing others will be to help you, which is what networking is all about.

Will Trevor is the Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training. Please click 'Follow' if you would like to hear more from Will in the future. Feel free to also connect via his Linkedin page, or via Twitter and Facebook or email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

Other recent and popular posts by Will:

4 Ways to Give Effective Criticism at Work

Job Interviews: Don't Take it Personally

10 Reasons Why Psychologists Believe You Make Bad Decisions

Is It Time to Ditch the Elevator Pitch?

5 Things I have Learned from Being a Mentor

Is it Time to Ditch the Elevator Pitch?

In the age of social media, it may be about time that we reassessed the elevator pitch, or even ditched it all together, so here are 6 alternatives that you can use instead.

The elevator pitch is a staple of networking master-classes and sales seminars. It originates from an era when senior managers and key influencers lived on the top floor in the c-suite. If you wanted to catch their ear, you only had only a few moments from when that elevator door closed, to when it opened again on the next floor in which to impress and deliver your message. But this was in an age before social media and email, when you were unlikely to have even met those people up on the c-suite, let alone been able to communicate with them.

The elevator pitch then evolved in the world of face-to-face networking to be your verbal business card when introducing yourself to the room and in this context it has some continuing relevance. It has to be fast, punchy, and concise, but also delivered in a confident and word-perfect fashion and maybe it's about time we reassessed it and evolved it into something that fits more with today's world and the many ways in which we communicate and receive information.

6 Alternatives to the Elevator Pitch

There are six alternatives identified by best-selling business writer, Dan Pink, in his excellent book about sales and selling, entitled, To Sell is Human. It's not to say that the elevator pitch is dead, instead you need to have greater variety to the way in which you deliver your message, so here's the 6 to consider:

#1: The Pixar Pitch

This is my personal favourite. Pixar is the successful animation studies in California, formed by George Lucas and turned around by Steve Jobs, which has gone on to make billions of dollars with successful animated films, such as Toy Story, WALL-Eand Up. The success of their animated movies was analyzed by a former Pixar story artist, Emma Coats, who developed a six-sentence structure that harnesses the power of storytelling in a concise and focused way:

Once upon a time ___________. Every day______________. One day____________. Because of that____________. Because of that_________. Until finally______.

This structure provides the framework for your Pixar pitch. So, using Windsor Training as an example:

Once upon a time companies struggled to get quality training from their training providers. Every day HR managers were inundated with calls and emails from trainers offering the same old thing. One day Windsor Training decided it was about time that training became more about what the client needed. Because of that training programmes were developed that blended delivery methods to suit the client and the specific needs of the learner, together with ongoing support. Because of that companies started to see a measurable improvement in the performance of their teams and the development of their people. Until finally businesses couldn't quite remember how they ever managed before Windsor Training came on the scene.

#2: The One-Word Pitch

Not as dumb as it sounds and bear in mind the many ways that we communicate a message to its intended recipients nowadays. If you think that it is not possible to be able to pitch your meaning in a solitary word, then I defy you to be told the word "search" and not think of Google, or "priceless" and not think of Mastercard. What one word do you feel embraces your brand and your values? For Windsor Training, I'd go with the word 'developed': embracing the tangible improvements in the team and the methods by which the training is delivered.

#3: The Twitter Pitch

The Twitter pitch is restricted to 140 characters or less - the length of a tweet. It encourages you to focus and summarize what you do, without too much extraneous babble. Research suggests that we rate more highly tweets that pose a question, so for example:

Would you like training that targeted your needs and delivered a return on investment through the development of your people?

#4: The Subject-Line Pitch

Email is still a ubiquitous part of our lives and the subject-line pitch needs to engage with our audience and encourage them into conversation. Subject-line pitches can either be intriguing, useful, but they also need to be specific. For example, if I was sending you an email about this post, I might entitle it, "6 Powerful Ways to Help You Update the Elevator Pitch".

#5: The Rhyming Pitch

Research suggest that we sub-consciously place greater reliance on statements that rhyme - aiding memory and understanding. In the trial of OJ Simpson, the defence lawyer, Johnnie L. Cochran, famously advised the jury, when considering the evidence of the gloves worn by the murderer, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." The glove didn't fit and Simpson was acquitted. Haribo, the German confectionery company, has a slogan that rhymes in several languages: "Kids and grown-ups love it so - the happy world of Haribo."

#6: The Question Pitch

If I make a statement, such as, "training will deliver an improvement in the performance of your team," you can receive this information, but not feel the need to respond or acknowledge it in any particular way. A question, however, forces the listener to respond, whether openly or internally, but this also requires a greater degree of receptiveness to the content of the message. For example, "How can Windsor Training help enhance the development of your team today?"

The end of the elevator pitch?

Maybe not. The elevator pitch continues to have a place, largely because it has become a generic term to cover a range of different types of statement. But this article has hopefully opened your eyes to a range of alternatives and it might be worth thinking about how you might develop some of these for your own business.

Have you developed a pitch, based upon the alternatives above? Why don't you pitch them to us in the comments below?

Will Trevor is the Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training. Please click 'Follow' if you would like to hear more from Will in the future. Feel free to also connect via his Linkedin page, or via Twitter and Facebook or email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

Other recent and popular posts by Will:

Steve Wozniak: Apple's Other Steve

Job Interviews: Don't take it personally

Mentoring: 5 Things I Have Learned From Being A Mentor

So you can lead, but can you follow?

"As You Like It": Getting Liked on Social Media

How do we get someone to like what we are doing on social media? Is it the same in person as it is on social media or is there something else going on?

We all want to be liked, unless, of course, you are the Grinch or Kevin O’Leary on Shark Tank! But even they, or so we’d like to believe, use their abrasive and unlovable characters as a shield to the liking and approval that they really crave. The ‘like’ has become an important element of social media and it has evolved to signify, not just approval, but the fact that someone is viewing and engaging with our content, whether shared or authored. More importantly, it is a reasonable indicator that it is being read, whether fully or in part, and so it is also a useful metric as to whether your social media content is hitting the right audience.

Thumbs up

It is interesting that the iconography of liking is the ‘thumbs up’ symbol. It comes from the gladiatorial arena, where the thumbs down was considered to be the signal that the victor was being given the assent to dispatch the losing combatant. Some controversy surrounds the idea that the thumbs up, by default, meant that the loser was being granted life, but popular cinema has embraced that idea and so has wider society and particularly the world of social media. In some non-Western societies, however, the thumbs up varies from being offensive to positively vulgar. Nevertheless, the thumbs up seems here to stay and represents the fact that I virtually like what you have done or shared, regardless of its real origin or meaning.

What does the giver get out of it?

The giver, for want of a better term, is expressing their approval for the content that you produced or for something that you shared. It is also seems to be some form of agreement, because the giver is more likely to hit that ‘like’ button, if you have provided something that accords with their own pre-existing viewpoint or that they agreed with having read it. My evidence is anecdotal, albeit based upon my own experience, but posts and articles that are somewhat controversial seem to get lots of views and generate plenty of comments, but encourage fewer likes. Slightly more upbeat and positive messages seem to be more likely to encourage the reader to hit ‘like’.

The passive act of liking

Beyond just viewing the post on LinkedIn, liking is the most passive act in terms of responding to a post. Nevertheless, it does flag up on your timeline, and that of your connections and followers, and so it is a form of recommendation and in practice it plays a similar role to actually sharing the article. It is evident, however, that some followers will like your content without venturing further than the headline and the brief segment that appears on the timeline. It would seem that the motivation of the latter is in generating attention to their own content and profile, which is another strategy all together.

What does the receiver get?

Perhaps, to get slightly psychoanalytical for a moment - on the premise that ‘you are what you share’ on social media - we also take it as personal validation and acceptance of who we are. Getting liked makes us feel good about ourselves and our place in this virtual world of social media amongst a global audience of connections and followers, the vast majority of whom we will never meet in person. But I think I am getting too deep here and this is a post for another day.

"Likes bring attention to what we are sharing"

Likes bring attention to what we are sharing. The author sees their viewings increase and this leads to an upward spiral of likes and comments, which on LinkedIn will flag your content as interesting and relevant and should then see it picked up by the algorithms, from where we see it promoted more widely on Pulse. This leads onto a virtuous upward spiral of likes, comments and shares, until that post, which was originally read by a few of your regular followers, has now circled the globe to a worldwide audience.

How do I get more likes?

Mathematically it would be interesting to see what the correlation is between the number of views and the corresponding number of likes: logically the more views you get, the more likes! But that doesn’t help us. These are my recommendations for getting more likes:

1. Stay away from controversy – write about things that make people feel good about themselves or that help them to achieve their goals. Controversial subjects may make for interesting reading and if it is comments you are after, you will probably generate more of these, rather than likes.
2. Give the reader a call to action – ask them a question and invite their views on what you have been talking about. Engagement spans the passive to the active and so the more they are encouraged to respond, the more they will probably give you a thumbs up.
3. Post regularly – if you develop a regular readership of followers, they will develop a predisposition to like and approve of your writing and your viewpoint. These fans will provide the early likes that will propel you up the virtuous cycle of likes, comments and shares.
4. Share-ability - does the content have currency in terms of addressing a topic that is currently hot and worthy of sharing with your fellow connections. Is it something that you might share with your followers if you chanced upon it in your timeline?
5. Tap into personal experience or expertise - followers like to feel that you are sharing something that has come from your personal experience or expertise, so if you can relate the points that you are making to anecdotes and stories, then the more your readers may relate to what you are saying and like the message.

If you've liked what I have written, well, you know what to do! Otherwise, what is it that makes you like something that you have seen or read on LinkedIn?

Written by Will Trevor, Founder and Training Consultant for Windsor Training: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

Picture Credit: By Mark McArdle from Canada (Fernando Alonso) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0) or CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"Open for business": why I am an open networker

I tend to accept most invitations to connect, whether that is on LinkedIn or Twitter, and so I guess that you would rightly call me an 'open networker'. There are exceptions to this rule: usually because the profile is not at all completed, or I have some security concerns over whether it is a genuine contact or not. Mercifully these are very rare. I now have a diverse range of contacts, from former clients to people I met when networking in person; and contacts on both side of the Atlantic, in the UK, where I used to live, and in the USA, which is where I am currently. I just don't mind where people are, or what they do, I am happy to connect and if some mutual benefit can arise from the connection, then all the better - sometimes it will and sometimes it won't.

People You May Know

In addition to the requests to connect that turn up 'out of the blue', I will also make use of the 'Who to follow' facility on Twitter and the 'People You May Know' tab on LinkedIn. Both of these apply an algorithm that gives you suggestions for further connections or followers, based upon your current list of followers or connections, and they are a great way of expanding your network.

Open Online: Open In Person

This same approach to being an open networker is how I conduct my networking in person, you just never know who can open doors for you and who you can help in return - that well-known principle of 'givers gain'. I enjoy my networking as a result and it has been instrumental in helping me to grow my business and will remain a key part of my marketing strategy for a long time to come.

Closed versus Open

Not everyone, however, is open to making new connections on LinkedIn, for example, unless they have met them first - whilst it is not my approach, I do respect their position. Often there is a concern that contacts will spam them with too many marketing messages, although this has not been my experience. For other people there is a suspicion of motives or intentions, and others, for understandable reasons, might have some security concerns.

I am often surprised as to why some people chose to be a 'closed' networker: I once read a very useful book, which I referred to frequently when I was teaching. I sent the author a request to connect on LinkedIn and they declined it, for whatever reason. In view of the fact it was a book on social media and marketing, I was a little surprised, as this was an ideal opportunity to keep a keen reader informed of any future books or updates of interest.

'Open for business'

The author, no doubt, had their reasons, but for me the ethos of an open networker is that you are open and receptive to new ideas and ways of thinking. You want to hear what is being said and you also want to join in that big conversation: it is all about listening and being heard. That is why I am, and will remain, an open networker and 'open for business'.

Are you an open or a closed networker?

Will Trevor is the Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training. Please click 'Follow' if you would like to hear more from Will in the future. Feel free to also connect via his Linkedin page, or via Twitter and Facebook or email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

Other recent and popular posts by Will:

Job Interviews: Don't take it personally

Mentoring: 5 Things I Have Learned From Being A Mentor

So you can lead, but can you follow?

Picture Credit: "Handshake (Workshop Cologne '06)" by Tobias Wolter - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Handshake_(Workshop_Cologne_%2706).jpeg#m