The Power of a Single Comment – Why You Need To Engage More

Stop Posting! Engage, Interact and Be Social.

Those who have listened to me speak or had an opportunity to talk with me privately know I am far less concerned about consistency in posting new content to pages and profiles than I am with clients being consistently engaged.

Creating content is vital. Done right it will help create and nurture relationships, it establishes authority and drives action. BUT your content should play a supportive role.

Social media sites are networking opportunities.

They’re about creating engagement and social interaction. Ideally you want it to occur on your content but, that’s not the reality for a small business. Stop fighting to make that happen.

What if you simply started to engage on the content of others?

Things happen when you do:

You become visible. Sitting back and posting content on your pages doesn’t get you seen (at least most of the time). Engaging where others are does. At a minimum, engaging elsewhere at least gets you see by the content author.

You create opportunities. Sitting on your ass will get you nowhere. If you want something you need to make it happen. Being active and engaged is the best way to find and create opportunities.

You drive attention back to your content. Simple psychology. (channeling Wade Harman here). If you add a great, value added comment or are visible on my content often enough, at some point I’m going to get curious. I will look your profile or page. I will read if your content is good (the supporting role I mentioned earlier). I may sign up for a newsletter, fill out a form, or buy. We all get the notifications when other look at our profile on LinkedIn. How often do you go back and look at who checked you out?

The simple act of engaging on the content of others with value added, quality content (had you even considered that your comments are a form of content? That regular commenting is essentially creating consistent, visible content?) will get you and your core content seen. At the very least, it provides for opportunity.

How well does it really work?

Back in July I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feed and came across this post from April Torrestorija. April owns Noire & Jet Coffee. It’s a subscription based coffee company (and pardon me for being a coffee snob – it’s pretty damn good coffee at a great price!)

While it’s the type of post most LinkedIn purists hate, I thought it was funny and added a smartass comment. April responded and we had a nice conversation.

Normally when I add a comment on someone else’s post, I’m used to them looking at my profile. In this case, the comment didn’t drive the profile view BUT the resulting interaction peaked MY curiosity. I took the opportunity to learn more about April.

April is in Tucson, AZ. That was an opportunity trigger for me. It was something I could use to further build a relationship with April. I spent 23 years in Tucson. I sent her this private message:

My message lead to an ongoing conversation (we are still in touch with each other), some free advice on her website, April confirmed just this morning she will be attending my October workshop and I have referred others to her site. April also has a resource now she can leverage when she needs to make a connection.

A simple smartass comment grew a relationship, provided a resource for someone else and generated business.

The best part….. It took less than 5 minutes on my feed! That’s a far cry from the time involved to find and create new content, properly post it and work to get others to find it (which still will not likely happen).

Shift How You Approach Social Media: Engage!

You can argue this method works for me because I have good core content already. I have a decade of experience. True but…..

Back in August, Deborah Olive, owner of Deborah Olive Consulting attended one of my LinkedIn workshops. I discussed this concept as part of the class. Deborah listened and put it into practice for herself. Within a couple of weeks, she created an opportunity for herself using my approach:

Deborah’s simple like and comment opened up a relationship opportunity and the potential for business at a local networking event because she was active, visible and engaged. The opportunity was not created by content posted on her profile.

The Bottom Line – Stop, Post Less, Engage More

If you are listening to all of the so-called experts preaching content first, stop and ask yourself how much time and effort are you putting in and what are you getting in return?

Unless you are seeing results like the examples above, I challenge you to post less and spend your time engaging and interacting. Then let me know how much better it’s working for you.