Are you thinking about opening a new social media account for your business? There are two ways to go about it:
- The proactive approach
- The passive approach
If you want damn good results (traffic to your website, engagement, audience growth, leads), AND have time and money to invest, proactive is your girl. If you commit to a new social media platform and employ the best tactics, you WILL see results.
If you’re curious and don’t have the time, money or inclination to learn/outsource a new social media network, passive is your girl. You can explore the new network at your leisure, experiment with content, and observe the people you follow. This approach is unlikely to make a big impact on your business, but it’s much less work.
Most marketers do not recommend the passive approach for your business. Because why bother being on social media if you’re not going to use it? (Unless you’re very clear that your goal is reputation management and username-owning only.)
But sometimes the passive approach does deliver results. One of my clients has been gently using Pinterest for the past few years. She pins when she finds content she likes, and we make sure her blog posts are pinnable. She was earning a trickle of Pinterest traffic to her website.
Until one day, four months after we published How to Start Organizing a Messy House: 7 Steps, Pinterest traffic started pouring in and landing on that blog post. Six months later, traffic from Pinterest to her website has increased over 400% compared to the entire year prior.
Why? Who knows! There are so many variables when it comes to social media “success” (whatever that even means), especially when you’re not trying and measuring your results. There’s your title, hashtags, search optimization, imagery, and luck of the right-place-at-the-right-time.
Today I spoke with a client who wants to try out Instagram and Pinterest. She wants to connect with younger parents (who tend to be on Instagram) and she’s curious how the search capabilities of Pinterest could work for her business. She is also “barely getting any sleep.”
So we’re taking the passive approach. We’ll test the waters and importantly, find out if she likes using either network. Maybe we’ll get a “lucky break” and, and a piece of content will get a huge reaction.
Regardless, I hereby declare the passive approach equally valid to the sexier and much-lauded proactive one.
This post is part of my 100 Blog Posts in 100 Days series. View the rest here.
