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Every One is Social, How Do You Differentiate Yourself?

byDouglas Ian
April 25, 2011
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Facebook has over 600 million active users, and nearly 50% of those users are active on a daily basis. If Facebook was a country, it would be the third-largest in the world. Though hard to believe, it’s a reality that social media didn’t have any takers few years back and now there seems to be no room left on the overcrowded social media bandwagon. Twitter, too has come off age in the last couple of years, growing at a scorching pace.

While social media adoption in the business world is a mixed bag, it’s more of a norm rather than an exception in our personal lives. So, how do you stand out from the social media crowd? How do you ensure that your social efforts don’t end up being just another Facebook or Twitter profile with no rhyme or reason? Here are some tips on how to play the “It’s different” trump card for your social media efforts.

Be unique

The easiest way to differentiate your business from the social media crowd is to act differently. Recognition comes at a price and there’s risk involved. It’s important for businesses to chalk out a social media strategy which encourages innovation while having a risk mitigation plan in place.

Merely building a Facebook or Twitter profile and getting few hundreds of Fans/ Followers isn’t innovation. In fact, that’s the norm amongst businesses these days. Businesses need to think out-of-the-box and come up with never-before social media campaigns. Uniqueness is one of the biggest selling points of any social media campaign. Plagiarism for ideas, brand promotion or marketing won’t help your business. If anything, it will bring a bad name to your business.

Social yet personal

Social media can be used most effectively when it’s considered as a channel for dialogue. As a business, you need to establish a connection with your customers through your social media efforts. Whether that’s instantaneously offering customer service through Facebook or Twitter, or launching personalized offers, it’s important to impart that personal touch.

If your social media efforts lack the personal touch, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

You are the brand

I often say that customers tend to associated themselves with people, rather brands. It is who you are, and that’s what defines your brand.  It is how you conduct yourself on Facebook and Twitter that has a telling effect on your followers.  Define your brand and live your brand on chosen social media networks.

Tech Savvy Approach

Customers love techs savvy brands.  Internet and smartphone are perhaps the two biggest technological inventions of this decade, so why not make the best of these for your business? Build a visually rich website for your business and back it up with appealing social media profiles. Similarly, it’s a fantastic idea to launch smartphone apps for leading mobile platforms such as iPhone, Android and Blackberry to offer an alternative access medium to your customers.

Customize

Customize your social media profiles and don’t be shy of innovating. No body likes plain boring Facebook or Twitter profiles. Add a custom Twitter background.  Create a custom Facebook fan page.  Add a custom welcome tab, add informational videos and other relevant content.  Try and come up with ideas which your competitors are not using.

What tactics have you employed to differentiate yourself from the social media crowd? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment below this post.

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Douglas Ian
Douglas Ian is the Chief Editor of Smedio Magazine, Bestselling Author, Strategist, Speaker, and Trainer, who helps businesses grow their revenue through specialized business optimization strategies.
56 comments

  1. Solid Article. I particularly agree with the “You are The Brand” & “Tech Savvy Approach” part of it. The sooner entrepreneurs and small business realize this, the more unique and effective they will become in selling their Brands to a social media frenzy world.

    You are your business, if you fail to keep up to speed with the trends and innovations available, then your business will fail. However, there’s a flip side to the coin.

  2. Great article with solid points! I find “you are the brand” exceedingly true as social media managers should see themselves as brand ambassadors rather than just a ‘manager’ handling the account. It is also interesting how you differentiate being social and personal. Got me thinking quite a bit over there.

    Perhaps you may also want to check out my recent article that talks about how small businesses benefits best through social media – i think your insights would be a valuable addon to the topic 🙂
    http://www.janwong.my/10-reasons-why-small-businesses-benefit-best-using-social-media/

    p.s. no obligations!

  3. Great post, Douglas!

    You have good points across the board and I think what especially stands out to me is the importance of having a tech savvy approach. Mobile is only going to continue growing and where as now having a mobile app or strong tech strategy is a differentiating factor, it will soon be the norm.

    All of these points are great ways for an organization to position their online marketing strategy ahead of the curve!

    Thanks for your time and thought you put into this post Douglas!
    @TyrellMara

  4. We’ll see what happens. There have been observations made that I lean heavily into the idiosyncratic zones. My approach is perhaps a bit retro. I hope to keep it simple. It is fair to declare that this noble adventure is more like visiting another planet.

    I’ve been wading deeper and deeper into the pool. I’m starting to think “social networking’ is a bit oxymoronic. Seems more like a not so tightly woven tattered mass of monologues.

    But, hey, I liked your monologue so I added mine.

    Social networking is what the villagers do here. They weave their lives together.

    An inimitably strong thread binding the social fabric of Thailand http://t.co/dB2UBei

    Tahm dee di dee-Do good get good

  5. Pingback: How Do You Differentiate Yourself? « Eklektikos

  6. About being unique, it has become hard to be so without bordering into ridiculousness. A lot of people are striving so hard to be unique they have the crazy-guy approach to social media which can work to attract people due to the “wow” factor, but fails in terms of conversion, when you have to actually do something with all these new visitors.
    So, the hard task is not just to be original, but to be original while still “making sense”, so to say.

  7. Very interesting article, no doubt that facbook is now a great source to drive traffic on your site but for this purpose you have to be very active on it and you have to do healthy discussion. Remember facebook have 600 million active users, so if you target the users in a informative and interesting way, surely you will get good benefit.

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  10. Great post, Doug. I know that there are a lot of people out there doing what I do, so I see myself as the social media voice for my little corner of the world. A lot of people are still getting the hang of things when it comes to Facebook, particularly in terms of the boomer generation, so I’m here to share my knowledge with them. I suppose in that way I keep it personal and customize my strategy to fit their needs.

  11. Well said … The key to long term social media success is building an authentic personal brand and deliver valuable content.
    A useful tool in this context can be a personal landing page or virtual business card to tie all your online activities together. It will help to build a bridge between different services and help to engage your visitors on a more personal and emotional level.

  12. Well I got so excited by all the opportunities out there that I created my very own Premium WordPress to Facebook plugin for hosting lots of funky fanpages for our clients and others on one WordPress site.  I think customization is crucially important but I think it needs to be tempered.  I don’t really want to see Facebook et al going down the myspace route of excessive customization.  There is I think a fine line between making something that helps you to stand out and something that just looks silly.

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