Don't forget to read Part 1 in my Journey into Social Media...

I’d fallen into a marketing trap. I did a market survey of one (ie. me) and decided that everyone must be like me and not be particularly interested in social media.

It’s dangerous to make assumptions that aren’t tested and after I’d detangled myself from my preconceptions I stood back and came to the conclusion I was wrong. It’s like a domain traffic investor believing what they’ve always done is the correct path while they watch their revenues plummet…..they’re just wrong. As Einstein said, if you keep on doing the same thing you’ve always done and expect a different result then you’re crazy.

My conclusion is that Social Media is becoming less and less about plates of food, cats, dogs (I’ve now becoming addicted to these….sigh….) and the like and more about communication and the sharing of emotional experiences. I post articles from my blog because they mean something to me and I want to share them. I also post pictures of Roselyn because I love my wife.

Social Media has always been one of those things that I’ve been both intrigued by and ambivalent towards. I’ve always assumed that social media is a complete time waster and a mind numbing parade of cats, memes and people speaking before they think…..then again I could be wrong…..

Up until recently I’ve had the following attitude about social media. I don’t really care what you had for dinner last night. Yes, I’m sure that it was magnificent but unless I’m with you then you’re just telling me how much fun I’m not having. I’m sure Donald Trump is/is not a complete moron but why tell me that? The cats are cute (sigh…..I miss Pepper) and the dog singing a song was clever but I’d rather watch a movie.

Over the last year I’ve been watching my daughter, Sarah, as she embarked on growing her social presence through Instagram. It’s been an up and down journey but since social is vitally important for any online business I thought it would be worthwhile picking the brains of my resident expert.

She now has close to 10,000 followers and this is continuing to expand. She has not spent a penny on any advertising and the growth has been entirely organic. More than that, her engagement with her followers is incredible with it being much higher than corporations that have five to six times her number.

As an example, last night Sarah posted a photo (she’s VERY particular when they are posted btw) and within five minutes she had 20 likes and a couple of comments. Within an hour she had over 100 likes and 20 comments. By the morning these numbers had grown to 295 likes and 38 comments.

I just checked out some other images that she’s posted and one of them received 696 likes and 115 comments so it looks as if it’s early days for last night’s post.