What Nobody Tells You About Your Social Media Personality

How to know if you’re a social media party animal

If you have had the solid green dot displayed next to your name in LinkedIn messenger on four or more days of the week for three hours or more, (I explained what the green dot means in this article here), then you’re a party animal.

Strengths, weaknesses and recommendations

While party animals are the movers and shakers of LinkedIn who reap its benefits to the fullest, they may lose sight of the fact that more activity isn’t necessarily better all the time. I’ll give you an example.

I once was talking to a firm about helping me with some work on my website. They sent me a proposal and I was contemplating it. This firm, being a digital marketing company, was extremely active on social media.

Well, a few days after they sent me the proposal, a bunch of people started throwing some shade at me on social media. It was nothing I can’t handle as this kind of thing happens to me all the time. The whole event was turning out to be an episode of The Jerry Springer Show. Well, on one of the more cutting comments, I see that the digital marketing company (who just so happened to be a follower of that particular hater), is liking this haterific comment that the hater made.

Huh?

Wait, didn’t we just talk a few days ago and you gave me this spiel about how you love me and my business, and now I see you binge drinking the Sara Grillo Hatorade? How dare you! You’re talking about me giving you thousands of dollars potentially and sending your kids to college and paying your rent, and you’re sitting there blowing me up on social media at the same time?

Say what?

So the moral of the story is to the party animals, while you’re shimmying and shaking in the Conga line, make sure you’re not stepping on anybody’s toes. You just never know who’s watching.

2. The lurker

Characteristics and behaviors

Lurkers are there to be on the down low. They use social media to research their competitors, vendors, future employees and prospects and are adept and using it to find out the 411 on just about anything. They rarely if ever post or share, like or comment on content that they read.

How to know if you’re a lurker

If you immediately fire up the LinkedIn app after you first meet someone at a networking function, you may just be eating the Thanksgiving Turkey Lurkey.

Strengths, weaknesses and recommendations

Lurkers are benefitting from a huge perk of social media that few realize, and that is the huge amount of free information you can get about people. You’d be surprised at how much people will put out there for public consumption.

What lurkers can do better is start to explore ways to make social media an attention getting tool. But do it in your own way. Not everyone has to take on City Hall with their postings. Try posting an occasional, well thought out comment that is tasteful, well timed, and in front of the right audience. You’d be surprised at how far that goes.

Quality not quantity, lurkers!

3. The curious ex-boyfriend (or ex-girlfriend)

Characteristics and behaviors

Do I really need to explain? You know how this one goes…or went (years ago when you were playing the dating game).

The curious ex-boyfriend or girlfriend is the one that goes radio silent for weeks and then randomly sends that “ex text” just in case there’s anything really good going on that they don’t want to miss. But there’s no real strategy behind this. It’s just something they do because it pops into their head when they have nothing else better to do.

Right? We’ve all seen this.

How to know if you’re a curious ex

If your LinkedIn profile photo has that grayed out avatar or a man or woman’s head with no profile picture because of lack of attention paid due to infrequency of your usage, you’re in this category. Just like the curious ex, you check LinkedIn every so often to see what’s new but with no real intention of staying around or taking any meaningful action.

Strengths, weaknesses and recommendations

Curious exes are too pressed for time to devote a great deal of it to social media, but that doesn’t mean they can’t capitalize on what it has to offer.

Exes should set up a regime and stick to it. Example: For the next three weeks, I will check my LinkedIn account for five minutes at 8:05 AM. I’ll post something to social media once a week on Wednesday.

Put it into your calendar so you don’t get distracted and forget. Start light and devote more time once you figure out what gets you the results you want, you social media commitment-phobes!

4. The politician

Characteristics and behaviors

We’ve all seen these social media politicians; their story looks so great all the time that you’d think they’re running for office. These are the people with the perfect profile photo and everything in their news feeds makes it look like they’re killing it big time.

Politicians are on social media to be seen and admired and not as much to interact. It’s an image thing, after all.

How to know if you’re a politician

If you’ve started three or more recent postings with the words, “So pleased to announce…” or “Honored to have…” then you’re a pol. That stands for both politician and polished, by the way.

Strengths, weaknesses and recommendations

Social media is a great tool for image management. Everything you do on social media is part of your brand; the pols are right about that.

But that doesn’t mean image has to be the only thing, because as I’ve written about in other articles, there’s major potential to meet qualified prospects through interactions that you have online. Don’t forget that social media is meant to be social not just a soliloquy. Dialogue, not monologue, really is the best strategy for building your influence.

Pols should strategically select a few qualified prospects each week and look into getting introductions or perhaps sending an in-mail to get some attention for those shining, glittery profile pages and the image you’ve worked so hard to polish.

5. The 5:15 clubbers

Characteristics and behaviors

These are the people who check LinkedIn after the market closes and they’re shutting down their desk for the day. There’s checking the box to get the daily scoop. While they may successfully get the big headlines, they have time for little else.

How to know if you are a member of the 5:15 club

If you find the sleep/shutdown/restart prompt on Windows too tempting to resist, you’re in the 5:15 Club.

Strengths, weaknesses and recommendations

While clubbers do exhibit remarkable consistency (and that’s important with social media), they also may not get as far as they could if the time was spent more impactfully.

Have a theme for the week and work on it every day. For example, if you are looking to meet green-energy executives one week, then on Monday do a search on your contacts and find three people’s names. On Tuesday send them an instant message or an in-mail. On Wednesday post an article about green energy. On Thursday find an influencer in the space and follow him or her.

Get my drift?

Sara’s upshot

There are many ways to get leads and develop your business using social media. There’s a way to make it work for everyone.

Understand your behavioral tendencies. That will make you aware of what you’re not doing, and what you should consider integrating into your routine to improve prospecting results. If you’d like some help figuring out which category (or categories) you fall into and what you should be doing differently then please message me through APViewpoint.

Sara Grillo, CFA, is a top financial writer with a focus on marketing and branding for investment management, financial planning, and RIA firms. Prior to launching her own firm, she was a financial advisor and worked at Lehman Brothers. Sara graduated from Harvard with a degree in English literature and has an MBA from NYU Stern in Quantitative Finance.

Read more articles by Sara Grillo