The First Rule of Social Media Strategy--Standout Yourself in the Battlefield

Looking back to the social media campaign and other strategies we designed for all kinds of organizations, I saw passion, creativity, and focus on details, but there was one thing we all forgot, the business thinking, or more specifically, competition. Almost all of us neglect the fact that we seldom put ourselves in the shoes of audiences or information receivers, but only imagined us as information senders trying to feed our social media outlets and getting people involved. But it’s just not that easy to get people’s attention. Because there is just so much information, so many “following” or “like” showing up on one’s Twitter or Facebook page at one time.

As a consumer of social media information myself, it’s very normal for me to not pay attention to what those “likes” or “following” are saying when I open my Facebook or Twitter. One reason is sometimes they seem too annoying, they post every hour or even every twenty minutes without too catchy content, so I become accustomed to ignoring them if I don’t want to spend one hour scanning from the first post on my facebook page to the last notice. People’s time is limited, facing the trouble caused by information explosion, not only from every organization which I once had interest and clicked the “like”, but also from my classmates and friends, people whom I know in the real life, you got to have a priority if you don’t plan to spend more than two hours checking your Facebook or/and Twitter every day (actually, I think that’s already too much for anyone who is not earning a living by this). 

So, social media is not only a platform, it’s more like a battle field. For every organization trying to achieve whatever goal or mission they want through social media tools, they need to compete with other organizations, no matter whether or not their products or services or missions have conflicts with each other, and also compete with people’s friends and acquaintances. The first goal is being outstanding and getting people’s attention. The situations vary from government organizations to non-governmental organizations. Grassroots organizations need to work much harder to make sure that they are not the first to be ignored. Because when needed, people will search certain government agencies to learn what specifically they want to learn. But for small grassroots organizations which expect to raise public awareness or even donations through social media tools, you just need to shout things out loud and in an attractive and creative way.