The Life of the Party

        Have you ever laid in bed dressed in your party clothes on your Instagram or Twitter? Have you ever invited your friends over so you could all get on Facebook? If you answered no to either of these, you have probably never considered social media as a party. Jason McDonald, author of “Social Media Marketing”, says that it is and if you are going to use it correctly to your benefit or for the benefit of your company, you need to start thinking this way. I think it’s kind of a silly way to look at it, but at the same time it is very smart.

        Jason tells us that one important thing we should do in order to throw a fabulous party, we should do an inventory of different pages that we like and dislike. We should pick out the things we want to maybe do or spinoff of and look at the things we don’t like and avoid doing them. In the stuff that you post, McDonald says that you should post around 80% of fun stuff and then 20% of promotional stuff asking people to buy your product(s). I think, as a user of social media, it is more appealing scrolling through your feed and seeing fun posts of an organization or company rather than a bunch of posts with what they are trying to get people to buy. No one will pay attention if all you post are ads basically selling the public what you want them to buy.  

        When using a social media platform for a company or organization, you need to determine who your audience is and where they like to “party”. If you are trying to target middle-aged people who are more interested in home renovations and home décor, then you should probably stay on Facebook and off of Instagram. Instagram is usually where younger people use social media. Teenagers aren’t really looking to renovate their homes and decorate their interiors. It is important to figure out what social media platforms your customers are using. If you don’t you won’t be successful on social media and you will be wasting your time and not gaining anything from it.

        In order to get your customers to find you on social media, you need to make sure you are discoverable through the five discovery paths. They are: search, review/recommend/trust, eWOM/share/viral, interrupt, and browse. You need to make sure your page or pages are accessible from these discovery paths. This is important or your customers won’t have any chance of finding you and what you are trying to sell.