In part I of this series we laid the foundation: a social presence being the sum of all your profiles and its evolution to a very significant social asset. That asset is constituted of the networks you developed, the content you shared, the trust and reputation you gained as a result of your engagement.
Presence & Asset Development
Purpose and objectives. Finding your very own
First year in the social web
In the beginning the purpose is to explore it and the objective is to find out whether it’s worth it. Later on the purpose is to enjoy it and the objective is to grow fans or followers, network connections and other numbers, simply because it seems we all get measured by those numbers.
Advancing in the social web
You will now want to find your own very personal or business specific purpose, craft an objective and bring it in alignment with your personal or brand interests and the interests of your ecosystem i.e. friends, customers, members etc. Write it down.
Don’t become a ‘digital tramp’
Making good use of your education and time, investing in the right connections and maintaining those relationships are equally important in the physical and in the digital world. Comparing both makes it a bit clearer with what you spend most of your time – and shows you if you are at risk becoming a digital tramp – mostly strolling around with no real purpose.
Physical world |
Digital world |
| Taking the time and strolling around in the city | Browsing around and reading all sorts of posts, viewing pictures etc. |
| Meeting friends for a chat at a certain time with defined people | Entering a group or forum and going through posts, responding on questions and so forth |
| Meeting with (business)friends for a specific topic to explore or discuss something | Working on specific topics in a group, arranging for a webinar, hangout, chat etc. |
| Informing people by letter or email about something | Message people publicly so many can see it contribute and respond for accelerated learning |
| Only if you are a publisher, publish your daily news | We all are publishers now and publish our own news |
| We visit a training to educate ourselves | We simply ask around if someone has a solution |
| ——————————————————————- | ——————————————————————- |
| We do almost everything by consciously thinking about it and then decide whether or not and how we do things. Otherwise we would just end up being a tramp. | Most of social media participants still need to learn not becoming a social media tramp and instead do whatever they do rather consciously. |
Key success factors.
After all those years of being in the social web and working with many others on a quest to find the key success factors that are universally applicable and most importantly measurable we ended up focusing on three factors or drivers for the digital world: Network, Contribution, Participation. Click on the link for detailed description of the NCP model.
You can use the NCP Model for your own social presence strategy.
- Look at your network and ensure it is growing with relevant people. Some may not necessarily be immediate relevant connections but have important connections so that their networks maybe important to you.
- Contribute daily. This maybe by sharing interesting content such as blog posts, images, videos etc. It maybe re-sharing interesting content from others. Or it maybe by commenting and engaging on content from your network.
- Watch the participation in your activities. Make sure your content is interesting enough to get re-tweets, shares, likes, comments as an indicator for the value you contribute.
Following these three rather simple steps you will realize it does not matter if this is your personal network or a business network, it does not matter if it is highly sophisticated content or very trivial chats. The only thing that matters is that it is in synch with your purpose and its objectives.
Summary for Part II
Having a purpose and an objective is actually the foundation of a successful engagement. Growing your network, fueling it with your contribution and seeing the growing participation is where you come to fulfill the purpose of your digital existence which will actually now completely blend with your physical existence as both have real people on the other side of the equation 🙂
In Part III of this series I’m actually going to share tips and tricks to make all that work by giving a few practical examples.
