Make People Like You Online… Just Smile

Today we continue exploring the relationship between social strategy and Dale Carnegie’s “6 Ways to Make People Like You” from his best selling book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Carnegie’s second way to make people like you is to smile. Social Media Strategists and business marketers must join the ranks of the many industries that thrive off a simple smile. It may sound ridiculous to say that a social media manager has to smile behind his computer, but let me explain. Here are two easy ways to smile online.

Your Social Voice – Most business marketers call this your brand voice. I use social voice because it covers personal and business clients. Your social voice is the tone you take online when posting social media engagements. Your social voice should usually be consistent across platforms. By using a lighter or more casual social voice, you will see higher engagement levels. To illustrate this, let’s use Police Departments – a very serious entity. The City of Chicago has a population of roughly 2.7 million and a Facebook fanbase of about 40k. That means for every 100 residents, only one and half follow them on Facebook. Now let’s look at Brimfield, OH. Brimfield has a population about 10k. Their Police Department has about 138k followers on Facebook. That means for every resident, they have 13 followers on Facebook. It is a world of difference. What is the difference, read the Facebook accounts and you will see. I will give you a hint, it’s the social voice. (Facebook: CPD vs. BPD)

Visual Marketing – There is power in the written word but a single picture can do so much more. Pictures have a tone. Any photographer or model can confirm this. First of all, to expose a secret of Facebook, using a photo will get you better exposure in the Newsfeed. So, first be sure to use a photo in your posts and use the right photographs. The photo that I used with this blog says a lot. It grabs your attention. It makes you smile. After all, when someone smiles at you, you smile back.

The concept is simple. People respond better to positive messages than negative counterparts. So smile and people will return the favor.