No Picture, No Profile. Why Are You Here?

Yea, you've probably heard me talk about this before. I make no apologies for it. 

Sadly, every day my eyes are assaulted by people's profiles. These aren't just Facebook or Twitter profiles, which may be (biting my tongue) a forgivable offense. Nope. I'm talking about BUSINESS communities, where the purpose of being there is to a) look for business or b) showcase your business. 

In both a and b scenarios, when you have a name, a picture like the one above, and nothing that tells the viewer what the hell you do or are there for, well, you look like a troll. It's why your follower count still sits at 17. Okay, that's better than three, but still.

I am probably not alone in this, but when I get a connection request and this is the photo I see, or a dog, or a flower, or any kind of stock photography image, I'm not surprised when I look at the profile and it might say, "independent businessman" or something as equally obscure, with no history. I'm going to deny the request to connect. 

If I know the person, I may revisit it several days later and still struggle to decide if I want to connect. Why? There is no value in my feed if the person isn't interested in providing any. It's like trying to drum up a conversation with someone who invited you for coffee and all they do is grunt and shrug. 

Don't make it so hard for people to talk to you.

This post idea wouldn't leave me alone after sifting through LinkedIn today and checking out the suggested connections. My goodness, if this is a business site, why do you have a picture of yourself drinking wine in the backyard if you're not a wine store owner? If there is more than one person in the photo, which one is you? You couldn't take a quick selfie with your smartphone or computer webcam? Don't post pictures of you sitting in the park with your kids, either, unless you're looking for a babysitter. While there may very well be babysitters on LinkedIn, you're not going to catch many corporate executives with that picture.

There is a whole host of reasons why social media doesn't work for people. The first thing you can fix is your profile picture, and make sure it echoes who you are, and/or the business you are in. But most importantly, make sure it is of you. Go ahead and use the background cover photo for the other stuff. The profile picture is the first decider on whether or not someone wants to trust you in their feeds.

A Digital Footprint Is Your Connection to the World, and to Life

Google is not always your friend, but digital and social networks are. Why? You can't control what gets said about you on your Google search but you can control what shows up on your Facebook.

Smart Insights published global social media statistics for January 2016. I urge you to click the link to see the whole comprehensive report.

There are 3.419 billion global Internet users, to which 2.307 billion are active in social media. There are 3.790 billion unique mobile users, and 1.968 billion of them are active in social media.

Facebook has the highest penetration of users between ages 18 to 34, then Snapchat and Instagram.

The most popular networks are in this order:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Google+
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Tumblr

Social media isn't just a fad. It isn't just a personal thing. It is your connection to the world. How you use it will determine your experience.

If you shut everyone out except the people who are in your immediate circle, you miss out on personal growth and connections that could make the world a great big beautiful place.

If you use it to exclusively flog your wares, send a bunch of group direct messages, spam your friends with direct messages to "like" your page, you'll lose connections in a hurry and the ones you keep will just put you on mute.

If you keep an open mind and connect with people you don't know, even if you don't have any mutual connections, you never know what will happen. Of course, you can vet those requests by looking at the profile to see if there is any information that might flag them as a fake account. But connecting with people outside of your sphere can bring you many wonderful treasures: friendship, great and inspiring images, educational and informative posts, business leads, and close friendships that can even move offline.

I vet people by not only if they're a suspected fake profile (usually the army photo is a dead giveaway), but also by what they post on their timeline. If they post continual negative and racist/bigoted links, I will pass on connecting. It is my profile, my platform, and I get to control what I see in the feed. I've done a pretty good job. I don't get a lot of trash or people I have to unfriend.

Social media provides a true digital footprint because you control the outcome of your profile page. Your social pages determine the public's first impression of who you are as an individual. It determines if you are approachable. Will people regret trying to reach out to you? Or will you welcome their social sphere and allow others to champion you?

Your digital footprint in a social media world from Anton Koekemoer

The Millennial Market Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

Millennials are not who you think they are. They are individuals. They are a collective group within a group. They are real people.

The one thing you need to know about this demographic is that they will not fit inside the box you have made for them. And guess what? This is now the largest generation, surpassing the baby boomers in numbers just this year.

The term millennial represents people who are aged between 16 and 36. That right there tells you that what a 16 year old likes is not going to be the same as a 36 year old. You're going to need a bigger transmedia marketing boat. You're also going to need to be in different platforms to reach each end of the millennial scale.

Especially for those who were born after the baby boomer generation, how you reach people will determine the success of your marketing campaign. You'll find a ton of statistics, like this Goldman Sachs infographic, that fall within the Bell Curve, which groups all millennials into an average age.

There are some things that cross the age groups for likes, passions, and must-haves. Take Marvel movies, for one, Pokémon Go for two. Music tastes might even be similar across the board, but not always. 

Platforms may differ. While we know that 78 percent of U.S. social media users are on Facebook (Statista), you can bet that Tumblr and Snapchat might be more popular for some, and by the time this post gets published, the younger ones will have found another app that none of the adults have yet tried to make their own.

When it comes to traditional media and where people get their news, the millennials cannot be fit into a Bell Curve. This is where you will have at least two different camps. The cord cutters -- the ones who never look at a television, get their news in their phone, and their shows on streaming platforms; and the ones who still watch shows on TV and get their news in their phone and in other sources (but may or may not be watching network news).

To reach millennials (and other demographics) your marketing plan could use a couple of must-haves in order to increase its likelihood for success: turn them into disciples and get them excited about sharing your content; make it easy to share, connect, and do what you want them to do; be genuine because their bullshit detectors are way better than yours; let them have a say in the direction you want to take; and for goodness sakes, be mobile-friendly.

Crowdsourcing Engagement

Before you build your transmedia platforms, it's important to know where your audience lives and how many demographics you will be approaching.

In using +Marvel Movies as an example, an audience can stretch over several generations. There is no one size fits all for demographics. Even though they may all come together for their love of Spiderman and Captain America, the interests and platforms of a 10 year old will differ largely from that of a teenager, from a twenty-something mom, to a 40-year-old professional, to a retired tradesman.

Know where your audience "lives" and what they look for (how they want to be approached). Ask them to participate. I don't mean "like my Facebook page." That means dick squat. What milkshake does your Facebook have to bring all the people to your yard? Once they are there, do you ignore them? Also, when you do ask for their participation, don't waste their time. Be brain-dead clear and concise.

Here are a couple of tips from the Australia website www.8ms.com.

1. Most people want advertising to feel like a story or game (see every Super Bowl).
2. Most want brands to treat the real world like a platform.
3. Most feel more compelled to jump in if the activity is in real time.
4. Most of all the media people consume is screen-based.

Managing audience engagement is crucial. Silence begets silence, and it is also important to make your content easy to share. Replies to comments and queries should be timely. If email, sometimes a few days is okay to wait, but in Twitter or Facebook, if you don't respond within a day, people have moved on and it seems like you have disregarded them.

If you make it hard for people to share your content, they won't. Digital currency is based on likes, comments, and shares. There are some traditional media sites that still throw up roadblocks to sharing online content. If your blog or post doesn't have a relevant photograph (we also see some media posts that don't), you won't be able to pin the story to Pinterest and if it just shows up as text in a feed, it may get glossed over.

There are a whole host of platforms one can use to extend their storyline: blogs, videos, podcasts, special Twitter hashtags, email, social media, web series, website, book, music, SMS, location-based games, novellas, comics, memes, the list is endless.

The following Blab offers up a few examples of getting audiences to engage in multiple platforms. You don't have to go very far to find ideas to inspire your own projects. These two creative websites are the ones mentioned in the video: www.conducttr.com and hitrecord.org.