Social Media Strategy – Engaging in the Conversation

Does your Social Media Strategy include engaging in the conversation?

My last post called Social Media Strategy for Staying Employed in the 21st Century talked about the need for creating your portfolio. Now let’s talk about engaging in the conversation to drive readers to our portfolio.

Engaging in the Conversation

One way to gain credibility and add to your portfolio is to contribute to conversations on social media. This includes:

• Answering questions on LinkedIn Answers
• Sharing on LinkedIn Groups
• Commenting on blogs
• Retweeting Tweets
• Writing a blog post and referencing other bloggers content

When you make comments on any of these mediums make sure and add value. A common mistake is to say, I really like what you wrote. I totally agree.

You may find that SPAM filtering services like Akismet will filter out your comment. Add value anytime you are commenting.

All of these mediums allow you to enter a URL along with your comment. This should be your website, blog, LinkedIn URL, FaceBook page or any site that contains or references work you have done. Our goal is to drive readers to find your work.

Be the first to comment

A great way to promote yourself is to write the first comment on a blog post. Most bloggers publish at the same time every week. This includes blogs on some very famous sites like Forbes, USAToday and others. Most everyone who reads the blog post will read your comment. Make sure you add value!

Another great way to promote yourself is to find a blog post that you want to write a significant response. Write the response on your blog. Write a comment in the original blog post that tells the reader that you commented in your blog and provide a link.

If I find a blog post where I have already commented on the same topic, I will write a comment on what I think and reference my original blog post. We are accomplishing three things by referencing our blog:

1. We are asking readers to read our body of work
2. We are making comments that demonstrate our expertise and adding value
3. We are building links to our blog. Yes, this is all about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and telling Google that our site should get priority in searches.

Do you have a list of blogs that you regularly read?

In my next post, I will give you various strategies for finding blogs to read and comment.

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Marc Miller Career Design Specialist