The Social-Network Illusion That Tricks Your Mind

One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all. The content itself cannot be the source of this difference. Instead, there must be some property of the network that changes to allow some ideas to spread but not others. Today, we get an insight into why this happens thanks to the work of Kristina Lerman and pals at the University of Southern California. These people have discovered an extraordinary illusion associated with social networks which can play tricks on the mind how to do social media marketing and explain everything from why some ideas become popular quickly to how risky or antisocial behavior can spread so easily. Network scientists have known about the paradoxical nature of social networks for some time. The most famous example is the friendship paradox: on average your friends will have more friends than you do. This comes about because the distribution of friends on social networks follows a power law. So while most people will have a small number of friends, a few individuals have huge numbers of friends. And these people skew the average. Here’s an analogy. If you measure the height of all your male friends. you’ll find social media marketing trends that the average is about 170 centimeters. If you are male, on average, your friends will be about the same height as you are. Indeed, the mathematical notion of “average” is a good way to capture the nature of this data. But imagine that one of your friends was much taller than you—say, one kilometer or 10 kilometers tall. This person would dramatically skew the average, which would make your friends taller than you, on average. In this case, the “average” is a poor way to capture this data set.

Meld online social with real world social

Building a presence on the Internet will only get you so far. When you venture into society, use the opportunity to engage nearby members of your online network in person. This can be in the form of hosting meetups or other get-togethers at your favorite café or watering hole, or exploring further afield by pulling together groups when you’re on the road. Invite people individually on Facebook, or broadcast your whereabouts via Twitter or Foursquare. Don’t forget to capture photographs and commentary from the gathering while the fun times are raging. Nothing beats a great party picture captured on your tablet to help build your network even further! Follow these tips and you should start to see your social presence gain momentum. But whichever tips you take to heart, remember an Intel-powered social media marketing new york tablet can help bump you up to the next social strata. All-day battery life gives you the power to post those selfies well into the night, and copious connectivity options let you keep your feeds active until dawn. Life doesn’t just happen in the office and the living room. Thanks to ubiquitous connectivity and portable devices like Intel-powered tablets, you can (and should) get your message across from just about anywhere. Rather than writing a social media update about what you’re thinking, now you can tell people what you’re actually doing. Better yet, show them with a photo or short video. The Asus VivoTab Note 8 makes social media marketing pdf capturing and sharing a photo or video with your followers easy, and its Intel processor keeps it running quickly and efficiently, so you can post those updates in a snap and not miss out on any of the fun. Mix up your message and leverage these kinds of images whenever possible; studies show that users are more apt to Like or Retweet posts that contain photos than those that only contain text. And when those photos and videos include familiar faces, all the better.

Spend time responding, rather than just posting

Social media is a two-way (or multi-way) conversation, and you prove that you’re actively listening when you take part in that conversation rather than simply sending out blind updates. The biggest social media players have shown how successful it can be if you actually respond to other people’s posts more often than you create your own original ones. Social media users feel a connection when you write back. And when they know that you’re a real person with a legitimate interest in them who takes them seriously, they’ll be more likely to reciprocate. (Pro tip: make sure you use the appropriate social marketing media syntax and standards for @ replies, hashtags, and the like. Not doing so may cause followers to quickly lose patience with you.) And once you’ve started to forge a connection, make sure you maintain it by staying active, no matter what distractions come up, or where you find yourself. Sure, sharing third-party content like lists and gifs is fun, but your social network may be more interested in content you’ve created yourself. Original blog posts are especially appealing, as they give the reader a personal peek into your mind, helping to establish you as a unique voice and build a stronger bond with your online network. While most social media shares should be sent out only once, feel free to re-share your best original content multiple times. Experts advise sharing posts up to three times, at intervals of eight hours apart, social media for marketing in order to reach readers located in every time zone around the world. But remember: social networking isn’t all about you, it’s about communication, and that means more than sending out content for feedback. Juggling a half dozen social media platforms and possibly even more actual accounts can suck up a huge amount of time. There’s no need to handle them all individually. You can use a centralized app or online service to help streamline the operation. Services like Hootsuite, Buffer, and SocialFlow let you register all your accounts, then manage them from a central dashboard, where you can create posts, schedule them for release, and better manage the chatter about you and the topics you care about. These apps let you turn an Android tablet like the Acer Iconia A1 into a convenient multi-tasking dashboard, and no matter what you’re sharing, it’ll be easy to do it from anywhere thanks to its zippy Intel® Core™ processor.