Engaging Your Audience at #SMWNYC
The best piece of advice I can give anyone who wants to know how to connect to her audience is to be herself."Be true to yourself; your voice, your attitude."At the end of the day, our true self always becomes apparent. That goes for brands as well as people.We can pretend to be friendly. We can pretend to be simple. But we can only pretend so long. Eventually, the true self bursts through, sometimes in an explosion of insanity.Sometimes those explosions are private. Sometimes they're public. Either way, that facade is broken.In different ways, this theme repeated itself in the panel I spoke on last week at Social Media Week NY, #SMEngage, put together by the folks at The 7th Chamber.Prolific (and popular) Viner Nicholas Megalis talked about working for brands not as selling out, but rather as buying in. Al Jazeera editor Jared Keller spoke about the importance of having a conversation with your audience - letting them know you care that they're actually reading. Fashion blogger Troy Alexander exhorted the audience to pick up their phones and instead of texting, calling someone some time, making that human connection. Mediabistro's advertising director, Tyler Ricci, shared how he seeks out influencers based on personal connections, not numbers.At first blush, those don't seem to be about being our true selves. But they are.When Megalis creates his Vines, they're about his art, and they're all something he's proud to share on his account. When Keller peruses comment threads, he finds stories and sources and leads; bread and butter for the business. Alexander had always loved Range Rovers and got to work with the company by picking up that phone. Ricci understands that true influence has nothing to do with the number of followers or fans a person has, but rather who listens to him.I pulled together this Spundge notebook from our panel, trying to pluck everyone's best insights out of the hashtag. Not all tweets had the name of the person who said the quote, but through context I tried to make it clear. I hope you enjoy!Photo by Stijn Bokhove via Flickr Creative Commons.