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Do I Follow the Social Media Rule of Thirds?

Do I Follow the Social Media Rule of Thirds?
Author: Jim Hardcastle

Jim helps people plan and deliver effective communications. His background in the countryside sector provide him with a wealth of experience in rural marketing. Facilitation, fueled by coffee, with Post-Its at the ready, he’s here to help .

Do I Follow the Social Media Rule of Thirds?

No, I don’t. I’m too nice it appears.

So, what are these Rule of Thirds and why did we come up with them? Let’s be clear, social media is about self-promotion. None of us like people who are trying to sell stuff all the time but clearly this is why a lot of people use Twitter and other social media platforms. Equally, many of us have a certain amount of humility, don’t like ‘showing-off’ and fear that talking about themselves through social media will appear like this.

To help people get the right balance for their content we looked at what we wanted from our social media connections and what the most successful people were doing.

For a start we wanted value and the most ‘followed’ people give value. They recommend good stuff constantly. They help you keep up-to-date and find new things. We connect and stay connected because they enrich our lives and fulfill needs we may have.

Secondly, we felt connected to them as people. Social media is still about basic communication. We like to communicate with real people, individuals, not faceless organisations. And don’t forget, we’re quite nosey. We like a glimpse into people’s lives. We don’t want to know that you’ve just walked from the kitchen to the front-room but if you’re enjoying yourself on a beautiful walk and have taken a nice pic I’d be quite happy to see that.

If people fulfill the first two requirements I’m quite happy for them to tell me about the latest piece of work they’ve done, show me their latest product or promote their next event. Like the first requirement this may help me stay relevant and informed; adding value to my life and work.

That’s our Rule of Thirds.

First third. Recommend lots of interesting stuff; new sites you’ve found, new music, good coffee shops etc. Chances are if you like it someone else will, and we all like a bargain.

Second third. Let us get to know you. Tell us interesting things about what you’re doing.

Third third. Promote your work and yourself.

Where people seem to go wrong is when they jump in to the last third without doing the first two. That’s just rude. That’s cold-calling, hard-selling etc and I don’t know anyone that likes this.

Just to check I was following our Rule of Thirds I took the last 100 tweets and filtered them into each of the Thirds according to its content. The result is that I’m too nice. 40% of the tweets were recommendations and 38% were about me. I’m underselling with only 22% about Viper’s work.

I’m happy with that split across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It feels right. I know the work related content is good because we can see the spikes of interest on the website and it’s led to work.

Why don’t you filter the last 100 tweets and see what’s revealed?
 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

- Posted on Wednesday 06 Apr 2011 at 13:31 by Jim Hardcastle

Tags: facebook (30), linkedin (11), rule of thirds (4), social media (34), tweet (4), twitter (25)

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