5 Ways To Create Engagement on Social - Marketing Monday - 09/23/2019
BONUS CONTENT: Best time to post on TikTok
In addition to my normal marketing activities this week, I’m continuing my exploration of TikTok. I had another (what I guess would be) successful weekend, hitting over 10k followers and a video with over 110k views.
Look, I know that there are content creators out there on TikTok, Instagram, Youtube, Twitch, and whichever other social network you can think of where 10,000 followers is something that’s not even in their rear-view mirror anymore, and 100,000 views would be considered a bad day for their metrics. But that’s OK, for two reasons:
That’s not what I’m chasing, and
I’m not comparing myself to them. I’m simply celebrating a win for me.
My wife asked me yesterday what my goal was with being on TikTok. This is an excellent question, and one I believe anyone should ask themselves when they start using any platform.
Important questions to ask before marketing on a social media channel:
What is your goal?
Does your goal align with your overall mission?
Are you creating content that moves your closer to realizing that goal?
Here are my answers:
What is my goal? And as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not trying to be TikTok or Instagram famous, I’m not looking to drive revenue through those streams. For me, this is a tool to a) practice my craft of voice acting, b) have fun, and c) market myself.
In the end, I’m attempting to create something that my friend Howard Yermish calls “intentional serendipity”. I could just wait around until I’m “discovered”, but the odds of that working in my favor are supremely low. So by engaging in this content creation across multiple platforms that showcases my vocal abilities, and by drawing and engaging an audience, it becomes that much more likely that at some point the right person will come into contact with that content.
I am also not relying solely on this tactic; it is but one tool in my toolbox.
Does my goal align with my overall mission? Yes. My mission is to do voiceover full time, and the goals I’ve set (practicing, having fun, building an engaged audience) all help support that mission.
Notice that I didn’t say “get to X number of followers”, or “Y number of views”, or “get Z number of likes”. These are false metrics. If those are my goals, then it’s more likely I would create content to achieve them. This is how you get people who make content that gets them away from their mission.
An example: I know a person who is attempting to build a career as a professional Brazilian jiu jitsu practitioner. This person also, while they have made jiu jitsu-aligned content, also created a lot of content that focused on their attractiveness. They knew that they were good looking, and used this as a quick way to build a following.
But when you look at the comments on their posts, the vast majority aren’t focused on their jiu jitsu or athleticism. They are commenting on their looks and their body.
So, sure, they have a big audience, but is it really going to help them in the long-term mission of going pro? It’s tough to say, but my prediction is that they really aren’t building engagement, which means that these “fans” aren’t really there for the mission; and if they change their content to focus solely on the jiu jitsu part, then they will see a drop in that audience. Maybe they feel locked into this now?
The moral here: be mission-aligned, and focus on that and engagement, not on false metrics.
Am I creating content that brings me closer to that goal? I believe so, yes. Anyone who is following me is doing so because of the funny voice acting videos I post. I don’t have to worry, as in the example above, that they are following me because shirtless workout pics and videos. (And, let’s be honest…I’m really not the person that should be doing that.")
How I’m creating engagement
I’m creating content on a daily basis that show me doing something that I love doing
I’m scratching my own itch. I create content that I would want to see, and as it turns out, there are others who would like to see it as well.
I’m responding in some way to every comment that people leave on my videos. (Caveat: I do not respond to the obvious bot comments, to the trolls [of which I’ve had pleasantly few of so far] and to the “Write RIP on my last post” comments…read about that phenomenon here.)
Voting. I’m asking people this week to vote on what character voice I should use to answer my next scam call (which is a popular piece of content I’ve made).
I don’t pander. If I get tired of making a specific kind of content, I won’t make it for a while. I won’t make videos simply to take advantage of a trend if I can’t be authentic about it.
BONUS: Based on my metrics, it looks as though Saturday mornings are a good time to post content. The previous two Saturdays I’ve posted one of my Screwing With Scammers videos, and both have performed well. I will continue to test this hypothesis.