A few weeks ago, I set out on the great Twitter adventure. As much as I like to call myself a marketing professional, I was pretty late to the game with that. Nonetheless, I dove in head first trying to read, click, and absorb everything I could about what works and what doesn’t in the Twitterverse.
I’m still very much a novice and if you count followers as success, I’m pretty far down the chain, but I did learn a few things. Mainly, I’ve learned that a lot of people claim to have “steps” for social media success. My timeline is filled with “5 things” and “3 things” and “how NOT to’s” but after further observation, I realized that everybody is really just following the same formula — Oprah’s.
Yep, Oprah. She has succeeded by doing a few things very well. Not coincidentally, building a social media following is strikingly similar to building a media empire.
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- Listen to Your Audience – This is probably the hardest of the steps to prove with anecdotal evidence. But I think it’s fairly plain to see that Oprah has achieved success by listening to the audience. This helps keep the show focused on issues that matter to that audience. By taking the pulse of the audience, Oprah had the ability to deliver what the audience wanted. Use searches or just browse your follower’s profiles to see what everyone is talking about.
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- Be Authentic – One of Oprah’s greatest talents is the ability to relate to her audience as a normal person. She asks questions as a lay person, not as a celebrity. She also has very publicly struggled with weight issues. By publicly enduring these ups and downs (whatever they may be), she proved to her audience that they are all struggling with the same things. Common experiences help form relationships. This is Twitter’s real draw, we get to see behind the curtain. While it certainly can go too far, it’s important to let your audience know that you are human.
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- Deliver Valuable Content – After listening to your audience to find out what they like and what they’re like; It’s time to deliver the goods. Convince the audience that you have something worth listening to, or reading, or talking about. Oprah does this by selecting experts that deliver no-nonsense advice for the problems that every day people are going through. This is interesting because Oprah isn’t necessarily developing the initial content herself, she is playing editor-in-chief and selecting which articles to publish to her audience. We can do the same thing.
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- Be Consistent – Now I have to clarify, I’m not actually an Oprah watcher, but just about every woman I know is at least a fan and an occasional viewer. By delivering high quality content every weekday, Oprah has become a reliable, resource for day-to-day life. She will be hard to replace simply because it is so hard to deliver value on such a consistent basis. So the next time you think it’s too much work to send out an @reply or compose a blog, just be thankful you aren’t producing a one hour talk show. If you aren’t there delivering content every day, someone else is.
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- Syndicate – Oprah is a very wealthy lady and part of the reason is because of the syndicated nature of her show. Her show is available in every market, every day, sometimes at two different times in the same market. This means her viewers simply have the opportunity to stay abreast of her content wherever they are. In recent years she has taken the syndication farther with O Magazine and yes, even Twitter! We have the same opportunity with social media. Take the content you create and syndicate it throughout your social networks.
Demand Generation Consulting 