Are you ready to increase the engagement of your brand or business online? Or are you ready to start a new outlet for it? This is a single-platform engagement plan, so don’t worry about other platforms yet.
Why Only One Platform?
We start this reboot or the kickoff for your engagement implementation on a single platform for two reasons:
- Changing your mindset and starting new activity on one platform will take a concerted effort to use the platform differently. At first, the learning, but more so the implementation, curve will be steep. We are changing behavior here, and it won’t be easy at first.
- It will take a lot more effort to participate in the conversation that is social media than you’ve done before. You will have to find time, efficiency, and dedication to get it done on a single platform. Can you imagine if you started all this extra work on the five platforms where you have a presence at once?
Week One – Fixing Your Feed
First things first.
Stop posting content on this platform. That sounds crazy right now, but it will make sense.
Doing things as you had always done them wasn’t working for you, so ceasing that content creation and posting will improve your listening and context while we are overhauling how you engage on social media. You were not adding value to enough people to keep it up, so, for the re-boot, no new content created or posted. Period.
To begin, we have to fix the feed that the platform presents to you by shocking the algorithm. Much like we outlined when we sought to change the content before you on a platform because it wasn’t what you wanted to see or stressed you out, we need to fix the feed of the platform.
Out With the Useless, In With the Valuable
On the first day of Week 1, go through your connections, friends, pages, accounts, groups, and hashtags to UNFOLLOW/UNFRIEND/DISCONNECT all the users of the platform that don’t add value for you. You should also consider if the value they add for you is within “The Five,” the five areas of focus for your content creation. By getting rid of the creators that don’t add value for your experience in the areas where you need to focus, you will let them crowd out the content you need to see and fall back into doing things the way you’ve always done them.
Now that you’ve pruned all the useless and valueless from your feed, explore the connections from those that do add value to you. Take time to look at their content, join relevant groups, or add certain hashtags to the content you consume that will add value to you, specifically in the five areas of focus you have. Doing this will give you an immediate win in controlling what content is served to you. Every platform programs their algorithm to give you more of what you just indicated that you wanted to see. They want you to see that newly-added content, because you will act like a child with their newest toy, ignoring all the ones you have to focus on the fresh one that you now have.
This process to tailor the sources of content you’re served will take a while, but get it done on the first day of this endeavor. This drastic change in how you connect with the platform will get rid of the dead weight and add new and valuable creators, telling Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or LinkedIn that you need to see THIS content that is now relevant to you.
The rest of the first week gets way easier for you, and you should invest the time of the remaining six days to help the platform really understand you by completing a solitary action repeatedly.
“Like” Posts
Indicate an interest in the creators that show up in the “new” content you see by simply tapping or clicking “like” on the posts that give you even the slightest bit of value.
Simply “like” them. Don’t leave any comments, reply to them, or even react. Just a simple “Thumbs up” for Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube and a heart for Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter to let the platform know what kind of content you value. Perform this activity with an emphasis on valuable content in “The Five.” Instead of focusing on seeking out new connections, take the time to consume A LOT of content and force the algorithm to understand the “new you.”
