Authentic Social Media Participation

As Associated Content's Content Promoter and Recruiter, one of my tasks at AC is to help all content producers use social media effectively and authentically. This is the first of many posts offering tips and tools to help you move eyeballs to your content the right way.

So what is authentic participation and why should you care?

Authentic participation is the phrase I use to describe the use of social media communities to promote content without "gaming," spamming or any other tactics that don't add value to the community overall. Let's break that down further:

Authentic Participation Is:

• Adding value to any community from which you hope to receive value.

• Examining the Terms of Use and Community Guidelines for every site you use and following those rules.

• Engaging only with communities that you genuinely enjoy interacting with.

• Presenting yourself honestly and transparently.

• Sharing the love by submitting and voting on (if applicable) content besides your own--and not just other AC content. Submit anything fantastic, shocking, interesting, funny, cool or otherwise relevant to a given community.

• Interacting on a personal level with other users of a community.

• Submitting only your best content and only content relevant to the interests of the community.

This advice may run contrary to what you've heard in the past. Perhaps you've been told that the only way to succeed on Digg involves assembling a vote-sharing ring with a few hundred of your closest friends. Maybe you've heard that auto-following 90,000 people is the best way to promote content on Twitter.

As a social media professional, I'm expected to get results, and the way I do it isn't through spamming, vote-sharing, gaming communities or anything else I'd be ashamed to attach my real name, Jelena Woehr, to. I get results through authentic participation, as described above. The truth is, some spammy promotion tactics work some of the time. But no method of using social media will work for lousy content or work all of the time. Authentic participation works for good content some of the time, and you don't have to hide your identity or worry about getting caught.

Better yet, I guarantee you'll have fun if you use this method to promote your content. How much time do you spend online for pleasure each day? Let's say you spend two hours chatting with friends and looking at funny photos of cats every day. If you spent one of those two hours participating in a community that you genuinely enjoy and occasionally linking to the best of your own content, you'd be having just as much fun during the time you already dedicate to surfing the web for pleasure, and you'd be getting more eyeballs directed to your AC content.

In future articles, I'll go into more detail regarding authentic participation, and I'll do my best to guide you to communities you'll enjoy based on your interests. For now, think about the social media sites you already use. Drop any that you don't love using. Once you've narrowed the list down to the sites you love, think about how you can become a prolific, trusted and authentic user of your favorite sites.

Which sites will you be continuing to use, and what, if anything, will you change to participate more authentically and have more fun? Leave a comment!