Share the Social Media Love

21 Ways to Show You Care

The Beatles had it right when they sang “All you need is love.” On social media platforms, the same thing is true. What’s important on social media is how you share that love and show others, your friends, colleagues, customers, social media connections and the public, you truly care. This means more than empty words it’s about actions.

  1. Share posts and other forms of useful information on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Twitter. Before you share something, ask yourself if it’s worth someone else’s time. You want to be known for curating useful information, not just broadcasting your own blog posts.
  2. Leave a comment on blog posts, articles and videos. What do you think? Did the information help you? Go beyond “nice post.”
  3. Engage with people whose content you appreciate. Reach out to them on other platforms. Alternatively, send them an email.
  4. Respond to comments on your own blog. Show you care about your readers and the effort that they took to read your post and respond.
  5. Answer questions on a forum. Do you have expertise in a specific area where you can answer other people’s questions. LinkedIn is useful for business topics.
  6. Retweet useful content. Don’t share tweets just because the person tweeting is well known. Check out the information. Will your followers think  it’s worth their time?
  7. Add commentary to your tweets. Give followers guidance on the information you’re sharing to make it more personal.
  8. Participate in a Twitter chat. You don’t need to be a Twitter chat champion to contribute to the conversation.
  9. Follow people back on Twitter. Twitter is a communications platform. One way to enhance your ability to communicate is through following people. This doesn’t mean you don’t check who’s following you and eliminating bots.
  10. Recommenda former colleague on LinkedIn. Did someone you know do a good job? Let the world know about it.
  11. Upload and share images on Facebook, Google+, Flickr and other platforms. Give others a glimpse into your life.
  12. Remember people’s birthdays. Everyone loves to know people care on their birthday. Send an email, write on their wall, call them or even send an old-fashioned birthday card.
  13. Thank someoneWhat matters is that you recognize their effort. Be generous with your thanks. Include people who give you relevant information, who lead chats, or do something special.
  14. Brighten someone’s day by connecting with them. Let them know that you’re thinking about them. This doesn’t have to be public. You’re goal is to show that you care.
  15. Give people a reason to connect to you. Don’t just send Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus requests to anyone. Let the person know why you want to connect with them and how you know them.
  16. Reconnect with people you’ve meet in real life. Social media is a great way to extend real life relationships. Connecting on one or more social media platforms enables you to see other aspects of a person. It helps to do this soon after you meet them.
  17. Take your time and don’t react in haste. Remember your emotions get channeled straight from your brain to your fingertips and the result may be less than flattering. The Internet, where social media resides, is forever.
  18. Understand other participants may not be native speakers of your language. Don’t jump to conclusions about someone’s post, comment or tweet because of their language skills. It may also be attributable to their writing skills.
  19. Skip the foul language. It shows the opposite of love. On social media, you don’t want to incite people needlessly.
  20. Respect other people’s privacy. Don’t share confidences or images you’ve been asked not to. These individuals may have reasons for not sharing publicly.
  21. Support other people’s efforts. Whether it’s promoting their recent book launch or conference. Think about how you can help, be it tweeting the event or reviewing it on your blog.

What you can take away from these points is embedded another Beatles lyric, “In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Ironically, it’s the last line on the last album they ever recorded. Maybe there’s a lesson in that as well.

Do you have any other suggestions to add to this list for sharing the social media love?

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen


This post is dedicated to the memory of Trey Pennington who died last week. Trey spent his life helping share the love and connecting people.

Photo credit: (c) 2009 Heidi Cohen

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