During the times “without SM” people were only meeting in different places and discussed news, views, politics, shared opinions etc. The same happens in social networks, because the behavioral model haven’t evolved much.
So let’s check those rules/tips offered by Dale Carnegie and try to match them to Social Media environment, in order to improve interpersonal SM relations with our subscribers.
1. The only one thing which can help you to make people doing what you want is – to give them what they want!
The main problem when you are managing fan pages is the belief that you know what to do and that you do not need any advice or someone’s opinion, so you just stop listening to your clients, subscribers, because “ you know better” and continue making this mistake again and again.
It’s great that you have some kind of hypothesis about the product, blog, fan page, posts etc. However remember it’s just a hypothesis! Listen to your subscribers, communicate with them, be curious, ask questions “what do they want, what do they like or don’t like. So you will be able to give them what they want and instead receive what you need.
Imagine that you have a pizzeria and you created a fan page for that. Try to reach to your subscribers and suggest them to write which pizza tastes the best, so they can receive one for free! You will be surprised with answers!
2. If you want some honey, do not overthrow a hive.
It means do not criticize nor abuse your subscribers! The creepiest thing you can do is to remove some negative comments from the timeline which appeared from some of your subscribers. Cm’on! Being professional means not showing any negative emotions on your fan pages. Give argumentative comments, facts, but NEVER fall down to the kindergarten level trying to prove something aggressively. This won’t help.
Imagine such natural thing like hive or anthill, and what is going to happen if each of those bees or ants will be not in the mood, pissed, so will bite each other. This will create chaos. If there will be chaos – the common goal of the hive or anthill will be lost. In social networks we do not like any kind of aggressive comments, posts directed towards us, we want motivational and inspirational posts, which will raise only positive emotion. If your fun page will be associated in people’s minds with the second one – you are on the correct way towards success.
The same happens with your aggression towards a flying bee- the aggression towards subscribers leads to defense. It’s in human nature- when someone criticizes us- we try to defend ourselves and our ego.
3. Obsession with own personality ais the key feature which allows to distinguish human from animal.
People are too busy with their own personality, so they do not have time to talk about your fan page. We all want to have cool things, which will help us to underline our individuality, character and help us to look different, better in the crowd. The same happens in the SM crowds. It based more on human’s WANTS, then on NEEDS. e.q. we all want to have the new model of phone, computers, cool sexy car and tell everyone around how smart are our children and so on. This is the basic descriptionfor all brands, because brands are obsessed with their importance as well: e.q. who has bigger amount of followers, subscribers, comments, likes, shares, tweets, discussion, involvement, activity.
4. Remember that people are managed by emotions, not logic!
It means that all your posts- shouldn’t be too long, with so much stories about rainbows and ponies. Just make them cool, short which will bust emotions – any kind of those. If this will cause emotion- people will talk about that: bad or good things, still they won’t be neutral. Fear, happiness, anger – those are emotions. The most important is to avoid abusing personal feeling of subscribers, because negative things shouldn’t be directed towards your subscriber. As the examples that could be cute kitties on the youtube video, or laughing kids – those lead to emotions! The same with your pages!
5. All what we are doing comes from two desires: satisfy our sexual needs and prove our superiority
Remember Maslow’s pyramid with the list of main needs and wants? Usually most of those needs are satisfied, but what about superiority? People want to be liked – it is easy as it is. We all want and need to have a goal of our life: to leave smth in history, say something, to be more interesting than someone else. This is the explanation of superiority. In social media all of those likes, shares, comments gives the author of the post the feeling of superiority, that his opinion is interesting for someone and raises emotions. This is the way to play with human need called “prove importance and my ego”.
6. Everyone love complements!
It is related to previous trick. Complements raise positive emotions and the feeling of our own superiority, so use it, play with that feeling and you can receive a lot from it. Motivate your subscribers to post more, to comment more and to be active, show that there is nothing to be afraid about when they are sharing their views and opinions on your fan page.
7. There is only one way to make people doing something. They just need to want doing that
Don’t piss people off by obsessively following them and spamming. Remember that it’s annoying. They will just try to find the way to avoid you. Try to show based on the examples of other subscriber’s, that you have cool content and things to share, so you don’t even need to ask someone to subscribe for your page, because people will want to do that by themselves as fast as they can!
