How to Get on Social Media Lists

To be seen, heard, and grow your reach, your social media marketing strategy should include how to get on lists.

You ask—what lists?

Twitter and Facebook have lists that you control. Google+ came out with circles. No matter what they are called or who came out with it first, you should be paying attention to whose lists you are on.

The phrase engagement marketing has emerged from the scramble of social, digital, and internet gurus trying to one-up each other and seem more creative than the rest. While it admittedly sounds sexier than social media or digital marketing, I like the phrase engagement marketing because I think it is a more accurate reflection of what it takes to be successful with social media. And if you are engaging others, this is one way that you might earn a place onto someone’s list.

Today social media is not measured by how many friends, followers and fans you’ve accumulated and even Likes have begun to fade in value. If your goal is social capture and to drive traffic to your website with the intent of filling your lead funnel and closing more business, it’s making it onto the lists that really matters.

Lists aren’t something new. They enable users of these social media marketing platforms to manage the barrage of incoming messaging and filter only what they want to see, allowing them to be connected to a controlled group while opening their profiles to a larger reach. The real goal then for an engagement marketer or social media marketing specialist is to form a marketing strategy for how to get on those lists.

Twitter has had lists for a couple of years now and I love it. My Tweetdeck is set up so I can quickly scan to see the activity broken out by lists of those I really pay attention to. An example is a list of my customers, I have a list called Biz for prospects and associates and another one I call Brains, for those in the industry who help me keep on top of trends and news. I call another list FF—not the friend follow you are thinking of, for me the FF stands for friends and family—these have nothing to do with work. I have other lists but this gives you an idea.

I have set up Google’s circles basically the same mimicking the above breakdown and now Facebook has introduced Smart Lists.

How does this impact your marketing opportunities? Greatly, actually. If you are tweeting and posting away and hoping for followers and fans, how do you know if you are even being seen? The challenge in Facebook is to up your Edgerank and now be added to their Smart Lists.

The bottom line in each of these social powerhouses is that you have to get onto a list to be seen. The emphasis before was to gain followers, and while that remains a key pursuit, the true measure of your reach today is how much engagement occurs and how many lists you are on. If you are not engaging with your audience and you are not on a list then it is highly likely your messages will never be seen.

Now everyone has a different arrangement for lists so I wouldn’t worry about what lists you get on, but rather whose. Your content needs to be stellar—I mean really top-notch news, always with something relevant and helpful or just downright interesting.

Engagement is another way that you can get on someone’s list. Your internet marketing strategy should include identifying who you want to engage with and how, such as by connecting, sharing, and helping. Answer some questions, comment, share their content, promote their causes, and they might put you on one of their lists.

No matter if you are doing social media marketing yourself or hiring someone to do it for you, you need a marking plan. You should answer these very basic questions:

• What is your goal(s)?
• What actions do you want your audience to take?
• Who is your target audience? (By name, occupation, interests)
• What resources do you have to share (other than your own content)?
• What is your engagement strategy? (What kinds of questions do you want to answer? What kind of questions do you want to ask? How do you want to recognize and acknowledge others?)

And here is a tip: Everyone is wise to the auto responders, so if this is something you are hoping to drive responses or traffic back to your site or blog, odds are probably slim. It is best to allocate the time to personalize messages rather than rely on auto-responders. You can create a series of responses to copy and paste to save you time, but try inserting their name or something to make it feel more personal. Oh, and if you are auto-posting through third party software to Facebook, Edgerank penalizes you for that, so try posting directly.

The point is, rather than focusing on gathering masses, focus on gaining access and find ways to get on to other’s lists or in their circles.