Tips On Becoming A Social Media Badass -

Becoming popular on social media is one thing. Having the odd post go viral is another. But to actually run the crowd and be as ‘social media royalty’ is something else entirely.

Indeed, this is the tricky part. You cannot crown yourself as social media royalty. Industry recognition as being a cut above the rest is the only way to meaningfully achieve such an accolade.

In most cases, accomplishing such a feat does not happen overnight. There are literally billions of voices on the internet, all vying to get heard. Cutting through the cacophony on a persistent, regular, even daily basis is what it will actually take before you can expect your inaugural coronation.

Gurus, Masters, Ninjas, Wizards.

If you have a human who considers themselves this and they don’t have their own religion, a magic flying broom and the power to topple governments they are no guru, simple.

Take a quick look at all the self-proclaimed gurus, ninjas and wizards in your Twitter following. Even if you’ve just got a thousand followers, you are bound to have dozens. But how many of these people actually have any meaningful influence on social media? None.

To become royalty, you first need a massive following. Realistically, it’s not until you reach 100,000 followers that you can even start to think that you might one day be entitled to a seat on the social throne.

And just having followers isn’t enough. You need content, good content. This is important, for just having an excellent social media strategy behind you isn’t enough on its own to transport you to the dizzying heights of digital super stardom.

Put simply, it’s not just a numbers game, you need to be hailed across all of the digital channels as being ‘the one to watch’, ‘the account to follow’, ‘the most inspiring/influential/innovative writer and thinker out there’. You know what I mean…

Social Media Kings and Queens

These people represent the very best social media users in my opinion.

1. Jeff Bullas

@jeffbullas is a giant of social media. A true king of the blogosphere, and heavyweight Twitter influencer. His tips, guides, how-tos and books on all manner of social media are pretty much second to none. If you want to see how social media royalty conducts itself online, then head over to jeffbullas.com.

2. Mari Smith

@MariSmith “is one of the world’s leading social media thought leaders, widely recognised for her Facebook marketing expertise. She is the author of The New Relationship Marketing and coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day.” (marismith.com) Yeah, we love her.

3. Guy Kawasaki

@GuyKawasaki has over 1.45 million followers on Twitter. He is the author of 13 books – including The Art Of Social Media and What The Plus! Google+ For the Rest Of Us – and has said what is perhaps the wisest phrase in all of the social media marketing:

“Do you know what the difference is between PR and advertising? Advertising is when you say how great you are. PR is when other people say how great you are. PR is better.

Tips On Becoming Social Media Royalty

Okay, you’ve seen the royal parade, and I think we’ve established exactly what social media royalty is – so let’s now take a look at 5 things that you can do to try and get there yourself.

1. Provide Solutions To Problems

If there’s one thing that all of the above-mentioned digital Highnesses have in common, it’s the fact that they do not simply regurgitate the same old content that everyone else is. No, they are actually listening to people and providing answers to common questions.

In order to become a true influencer, you first have to adopt the mindset of a critical thinker. When composing your content, don’t simply start putting one word after another to fill the page. If you’ve got a great flair for writing, then you might very well find yourself with a loyal fan-base of adequately entertained followers. But, if all you’re doing is putting a quiet smirk on their faces, then you will never achieve any meaningful influence.

2. Be Original

Rather that you have to give yourself a unique voice and a unique standpoint, and either tackle issues that haven’t been tackled before, or tackle old issues from a new angle that hasn’t been thought of experimented with as yet.

If you manage to hit on something that’s truly new and innovative, then you can expect to find yourself being referenced by other key players in your industry, and start to be heralded as the true thought leader that you know you are.

3. Engage With Your Subjects

They say that content is king – and it most certainly is. But, it is kind of a whole royal family of other strategies that are designed to complement His Majesty’s prowess.

By engaging your following regularly – even if it’s just thanking an individual for a positive comment – you will ensure that you stay on everyone’s radar. A little acknowledgement will also do wonders for your continued popularity.

4. Organise Your Distribution

Your king (i.e. your content) is only ever as good and as influential as its reach. You could start writing the best social media blog ever written tomorrow – but unless you have adequate means of distributing that content, then it’s quite likely that it will never get discovered by anybody at all ever.

Yes, to become social media royalty, you also have to be able to practice what you preach, and, indeed, your success should be demonstrable in your following and reach.

This means that you have to have proper social media strategies in place to ensure that you’re reaching as many people as possible. It’s not enough to just be the king or queen of one platform either – you need a presence on Twitter, on Facebook, on Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube before you can be truly crowned. And a lot of this goes right back to basics – #hashtags, keywords, tagging and linking. Once you’ve created the king of all content, let your fans share it.

5. Be A Master Of All Forms

Blogs are one thing, tweets are another, and YouTube videos are something else entirely. At the moment, the video is gaining the most traction, and with the likes of Periscope now making waves across the web, this is quite likely to be the trend that rises most rapidly.

That being said, your blogs and your writing will always be important. That’s something that simply won’t change anytime soon. The written word has a longevity that a flavour-of-the-month video doesn’t.
However, it all comes down to variety – and you must always remember that what’s here today will be gone tomorrow, especially in social media. Presence is the key. Constant presence.

Who do you hail as social media royalty? Let us know below.