Thoughts 4 Friday – Be Original With Social Media

Ahh, the Retweet. A legacy act of kindness in the twitter (Social Media) community.

Then there is the reshare, the +1, the stumble, and the like. This can be backed up by digging, buffering, redditting, pinning, and a wide array of other ing ings…

Of course, why not, all of these things are easy to do and they are a nice way to pay a compliment, share something relevant, or just get involved.

At least most of this sharing is of others (hopefully) original content. You gotta love the RT of the RT of the Share that was originally +1 (Assuming anyone is using Google+).

However, all of this sharing of others content has at times made me wonder where all of the creativity has gone? Dare we be original?

While sharing is caring and it is true sometimes others stuff is just so good that we MUST curate it (I do quite a bit of it myself)…Nevertheless, what will set us apart is what we “Add” to the conversation. Begging the question, how can we all be more original?

Here are 4 things to experiment with to add your voice to the conversation…

• Blogging: A bit obvious, but it is a chance to develop and deliver an original voice around just about anything. While this method of putting your ideas out there is a winner, sadly, I see a lot more too blogs than those that really add to a topic.

 

• Edit RT: Take a chance and add to the tweet. An opinion, why you agree, or go crazy and suggest what you don’t agree with. Trust me, it will go further than the generic RT.

 

• Be Profound or Even Provocative: Ask a question that makes people think. If you want to go out on a limb, and if you aren’t tweeting on behalf of your company maybe even be a big provocative. This works for sure!

 

• Test Your Comfort Zone: After all this is Social, and that makes it kind of random. Jump in and participate in an area you aren’t an expert on. Since we aren’t really experts on any topic you can do this with anything.

Will you dare to be original? I can’t wait to find out!

Author: Daniel Newman

Daniel Newman is the Principal Analyst of Futurum Research and the CEO of Broadsuite Media Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise. From Big Data to IoT to Cloud Computing, Newman makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology projects, which leads to his ideas regularly being cited in CIO.Com, CIO Review and hundreds of other sites across the world. A 5x Best Selling Author including his most recent “Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy,” Daniel is also a Forbes, Entrepreneur and Huffington Post Contributor. MBA and Graduate Adjunct Professor, Daniel Newman is a Chicago Native and his speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.