Strategies for being a good person to follow on social media

With thanks to Kinda Jackson and our Digital & Social team!

We get asked a thousand variations on this question: how do I become influential to support my brand? How do I become a thought leader? How do I gain a following? How do I boost engagement from my community? And so on.

I wanted to share some thoughts collated with input from our digital and social team, as well as the lessons I’ve learned from the people I enjoy following online and my own time (mis)spent on social media.

This will be an endless and ever-growing list, so the below is neither comprehensive nor unchanging. But hopefully it’s a useful framing for some of the key, perhaps more evergreen strategies.

Of course, I only apply some of these principles myself; given that first and foremost in being an enjoyable person for someone else to follow online is to be an authentic version of yourself… and, well, there’s reason my TikTok following is only 7 people strong. I’m better off camera, I’m not that funny, and I’m not as spontaneous as I’d like to be, and I am absolutely terrible with Photoshop (see above; may the force be with you always).

So, let’s start there, with the idea of being true to yourself.

Johari’s window and trust online

I’m a fan of the concept of Johari’s window – a psychological model used to map what we know about ourselves and what we know about each other.

One aspect of it I particularly like is the notion that people trust people when they sense they are sharing their known knowns – and some of their known unknowns – i.e. if you are sharing your true self, people know it and are – potentially – more likely to trust you. It’s only by being visibly genuine that you can truly convince your community that you are real, present and engaged. It’s a difficult thing for many business leaders – used to presenting a polished version of themselves – to make themselves a little vulnerable with their openness at times. But finding a way to unify your personal and professional self in a coherent way, in my view, is key to building trust.

Good example (though not necessarily a good human): Elon Musk. The outrageous tone, directness and personality that comes through Musk’s social media presence has won him as many fans as detractors. But there’s no question he has a highly engaged following and is ludicrously influential online. There are more balanced examples too – Cisco’s Chuck Robbins comes across as very real online, as does PayPal’s Dan Schulman. So does your favourite sweary marketing professor, and mine – Mark Ritson.

Being interesting… is being interested.

This is one so many execs trip over. Being interesting isn’t necessarily about being worthy about the topics you think your customers are losing sleep over 100% of the time. Sometimes it’s an idle observation, an industry pun, a comment on your political principles, or just relaying an anecdote that made you think.  Sometimes these will polarise; other times they will trigger conversations.

This interest could manifest in engaging with your peers, colleagues, customers and wider community – tagging people into discussions you had in the real world for an online follow up, to challenge an assumption or further a debate.

The most important thing? Having a broad pool of inspiration to draw from. Your network, your community, traditional media, your customer audiences, key influencers and digital content creators whose work you like (whatever you think of Simon Sinek, for example, reposting one of his videos on LinkedIn will get almost any business leader engagement). And of course, you need to be comfortable with the level of risk you take as you attempt to be interested and/or interesting.

Shake up your content formats

Being a fun person to follow isn’t just about curating interesting press or social content you liked in a monotone voice. “This was an interesting piece of news today…” is fine, but people have plenty of options for news aggregation, news personalisation and more. What will make you an interesting conduit or source for content? It might be how you frame it (Marketoonist takes massive trending stories each week and lampoons them in his trademark style), or asking your community their perspective on it (polls can be engaging if you don’t overdo them), providing a how-to or explainer video about an emerging issue for you and your community… or a whole lot more.

It might be writing a haiku about a new piece of legislation. Or parodying a Tiktok meme with your products (I’m waiting for someone to make a digital quesadilla wrap as a metaphor for no-code app development right about now).

As platforms introduce new formats, there’s a novelty dimension you can play off too. Try a Twitter audio Space, do a LinkedIn Live, embed a PDF on LinkedIn, play with image formats. People are curious about new ways to interact with new types of content and will be more interested the first few times they see it than the 4000th. Particularly if its relevant and well done – not just done for the sake of it.

Be creative with your visuals

It’s well established that visual content performs better organically on social than plain text, and whilst this isn’t always the case (a well worded tweet or status update can go far!), it does mean that standing out in a field of visual social content is harder than it used to be.

That means: original, creative, relevant, grabbing visual content trumps anodyne, ego-centric, or generic stock every time. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of great resources for great pictures online – but you might need to spice them up a little to genuinely engage people.

Be mindful of the channels you’re on

If you start posting multiple times a day on LinkedIn, you’ll rapidly find that more is not better. The algorithm that feeds what people see doesn’t like being oversaturated. In contrast, posting infrequently on Twitter means people don’t know you’re there, and you’re not seen to be engaging in the discussions as they happen. Find a balance that makes sense for you, experiment with timing your posts to line up with when your audiences are most engaged (varies by individual, their network, their geography, as well as by how people habitually use different social platforms).

Don’t be a d

This one goes without saying. Except, of course, often it doesn’t, and so needs saying. There’s no place in business communications for unpleasantness – it’s always possible to rise above it in some way, shape or form.

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There’s lots more to touch on. What’s the role of paid promotion? How much coherence around the topics and themes you share on does there need to be? What about podcasting and live audio? How many pictures of food is it OK to share? Are Star Wars puns acceptable social currency? How much should you talking about yourself/your company vs talking about other things happening in your industry/community?

As I said when I started, there’s a never ending string of strategies, principles and tactics that can help you engage with your communities. If you take nothing else, go back to the first principle; be true to yourself. And think of your community as real people, not simply a source of likes and shares or possible future customers. And keep at it. Keep talking, trying, sharing, experimenting – you’ll find you go far.

If this doesn’t sound easy, it isn’t. Few people have the combination of creative talent, wit, production value, timing, network and luck required to ‘go viral’ – building influence is a longer, slower, more meticulous process than tweet and hope. Which is part of what keeps our digital team so busy, as most people have a day job that isn’t ‘full time social influencer,’ and so need a little help!

Hit us up with further thoughts in the comments; and of course, reach out if you want to kick any ideas around.