Social Media Lurking 101

How to Follow the Successful Other Guys
on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter

by Karen A.Teeters

In a recent post I discussed the importance of following businesses that are similar to yours to see what kind of successful social marketing media strategies they utilize to create business.

You are probably thinking how to accomplish this within each of these platforms. I would like to share with you what I originally did after I created my first blog for my husband's Corvette art business. 

Follow Friendly Competitors

First you need to be familiar with other companies that might be friendly competitors or offer complementary services to your business. My husband, Scott Teeters is a car artist and author who has been writing articles and creating art for car magazines for over thirty years. His most popular series is the Illustrated Corvette Series which has been appearing in Vette magazine since 1997. Scott resells his popular Corvette art on his website called illustratedcorvetteseries.com. The supporting blog I created is CorvetteReport.com. So Scott's customers are Corvette enthusiasts who like to buy Corvette art, Corvette magazines, Corvette clothing, Corvette aftermarket items and anything Corvette that relates to the specific model Corvette they own.

Appeal to Your Market's Enthusiasts

So I researched companies who appeal to this market. Corvette Central and Corvette America sell Corvette supplies and accessories to this demographic. Online Corvette forums appeal to this crowd. CorvetteBlogger is a popular Corvette lifestyle blog. So I follow these companies everywhere.

Scott has a Facebook account. So he looks up these companies to find their Facebook business pages. He “likes” (facebookese for follow) them so that he can see their comments and posts on his wall. He can observe whether or not they have a landing page or if they are offering special discounts. He can become members of Corvette enthusiast groups on Facebook and see what the other companies are commenting on these posts as well.

On Linkedin, he can look up the main players, owners, ceos of these companies and link with them to see what is happening in their industries and how they are using LinkedIn. He can join Corvette groups on LinkeIn as well.

Over on Twitter, he can look up companies like Corvette Central and Corvette America and follow them. He can follow Corvetteblogger and all the Corvette forums on Twitter as well. And he can follow people who follow these accounts. Get the idea?

Hopefully this description gets your creative head thinking about all the companies you could be following and lurking in the background to observe just how they behave and interact on social media networks.

Read the Primers First

Now before you do all this it is best to advise that you do read a few social media primers such as Chris Brogan's Social Media 101, Shamar Hyder Kabani's The Zen of Social Marketing and Tara Hunt's The Power of Social Networking to get an idea of best practices like providing useful tips and fun comments 70% of the time and marketing business offers only 30% of the time. That being said you will be able to lurk intelligently and take notes on some clever ideas that your competitors do that will help your own efforts.

One of the best things you will see other people do and you too can do on Twitter for example is retweet helpful tips and insights of some of the people and businesses you follow. If you think the tip is something that your potential client that is following you on Twitter could benefit, then by all means retweet. On your Facebook wall, you will see other people share  any tips or comments of the people or businesses they are following and you can do the same. This makes you look good!

With LinkedIn, you can always leave comments about what you are up to with helpful tips and events. You can answer questions as an expert to certain groups and leave comments in the groups you are a member of and of course read all of the comments of those in your LinkedIn connections.

Another thought here. When you find a website of a company you would like to follow, someone who is doing something similar to you, you will often find links to follow them on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Do it! Link to them and take some time in the beginning of your social media research to lurk in the background and see what they do. Try to learn from the best and leave the rest as they say.

Good luck with your social media research. More tips to come.

For more tips on social media marketing, follow this blog and visit Karen Teeters' website at FiveStarSiteMakers.com. You may republish this article in full. Just make sure you list this paragraph and provide a link.