Social Media Naturals

Talented social media nat­ur­als are rare to find.

As a digit­al strategist, I can often tell wheth­er someone work­ing at a com­pany “gets” social media. In my exper­i­ence, hav­ing a social media nat­ur­al in charge of your brand accounts is more efficient.

How do you recog­nise a social media natural?

Here goes:

Social Media Naturals

Having done my fair share of media train­ing, I’ve learnt that most people have their pre­ferred means of communication.

And so on.

Some people find it easy to com­mu­nic­ate via social media, i.e., they are social media nat­ur­als. No one has to teach them any­thing; they just “get” it.

As we adapt to the Electronic Age, Generation Z might be the first cohort where a major­ity can be con­sidered social media naturals. 

Definition of Social Media Naturals

Here’s how to define social media naturals:

Social media nat­ur­al = someone for whom it’s intu­it­ive and effort­less to com­mu­nic­ate via social net­works. ¹Silfwer, J. (2010, April). Social Media Naturals. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​o​c​i​a​l​-​m​e​d​i​a​-​n​a​t​u​r​a​ls/

Please note that social media nat­ur­als are not syn­onym­ous with influ­en­cers (i.e. digit­al per­son­al­it­ies with online audiences). 

Remember:

Influencers are often social media nat­ur­als.
However, not all social media nat­ur­als are influencers.

Learn more: Social Media Naturals

Why Social Media Naturals are Valuable

In future gen­er­a­tions, almost every­one will be a social media nat­ur­al. But until then, organ­isa­tions will have to find — and hire! — them.

Hiring a social media influ­en­cer to execute the digit­al strategy can be a hit-or-miss enter­prise. From a close-up per­spect­ive, I’ve seen this sev­er­al times.

Influencers tend to care mostly about their brands; for them, it’s always about pos­i­tion­ing them­selves in the mar­ket­place. However, a niched social media nat­ur­al can find an organ­isa­tion with match­ing passions.

Identifying social media nat­ur­als with­in an organ­isa­tion is often more straight­for­ward than one might think. This is because they can­’t stop con­stantly inter­act­ing on social media with the top­ic of their interest. 

Many organ­isa­tions have experts using social media to dis­cuss and con­nect, but no one might have invited them to con­trib­ute pro­fes­sion­ally to the organ­isa­tion’s social media strategy.

How To Empower Social Media Naturals

When look­ing for a com­munity man­ager, I always invest­ig­ate their per­son­al social media presence. 

I’d look not for massive fol­low­ings but for ease of use, pas­sion, and will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment. I’d look spe­cific­ally for someone who has no prob­lems find­ing the right ton­al­ity for vari­ous social media situations.

Once with­in the organ­isa­tion, I’d sug­gest cre­at­ing a frame­work well-suited for social media naturals:

The Narcissistic Principle

“People want to be loved; fail­ing that admired; fail­ing that feared; fail­ing that hated and des­pised. They want to evoke some sort of sen­ti­ment. The soul shud­ders before obli­vi­on and seeks con­nec­tion at any price.”
— Hjalmar Söderberg (1869−1941), Swedish author

When we share on social media, we share for a reas­on. And that reas­on typ­ic­ally has some­thing to do with… ourselves:

It’s the nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple behind why we share on social media.

The nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple = when we share or engage on social media, we mainly share aspects of ourselves — because that’s what we care about most. ²Silfwer, J. (2012, July 16). The Narcissistic Principle. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​n​a​r​c​i​s​s​i​s​t​i​c​-​p​r​i​n​c​i​p​le/

If you can get social media to work for you, great.
Make the most of it. 

However, we should all be mind­ful not to let the “online pres­sure cook­er” get the bet­ter of us.

“A status update with no likes (or a clev­er tweet without retweets) becomes the equi­val­ent of a joke met with silence. It must be rethought and rewrit­ten. And so we don’t show our true selves online, but a mask designed to con­form to the opin­ions of those around us.”
— Neil Strauss, Wall Street Journal

Learn more: The Narcissistic Principle

The Influencers in Public Relations

In pub­lic rela­tions, influ­en­cers are indi­vidu­als who have man­aged to grow a sub­stan­tial audi­ence, which has the poten­tial to affect a spe­cif­ic organ­isa­tion either pos­it­ively or negatively.

Influencers = inde­pend­ent con­tent cre­at­ors with influ­en­tial plat­forms and fol­low­ings of poten­tial import­ance to a brand. ³Silfwer, J. (2020, January 15). The Influencers in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​i​n​f​l​u​e​n​c​e​r​s​-​i​n​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​ns/

Establishing and main­tain­ing good rela­tion­ships with stra­tegic­ally chosen influ­en­cers for the organ­isa­tion is often crit­ic­ally important.

“Influencers in pub­lic rela­tions are emer­ging stake­hold­ers who gen­er­ate a state of opin­ion in the digit­al com­munity that sur­passes tra­di­tion­al pub­lic opin­ion.”
Source: The Role of Prosumers in the Interactive and Digital Processes of Public Relations ⁴Polo, M. (2020). The Role of Prosumers in the Interactive and Digital Processes of Public Relations. 161 – 174. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​4​0​1​8​/​978 – 1‑7998 – 3119‑8.ch012

How To Categorise Influencers

There aren’t stand­ard­ised ter­min­o­lo­gies for influ­en­cer mar­ket­ing and influ­en­cer rela­tions, and no gen­er­al fol­low­ing sizes or engage­ment ratios exist. However, it’s pos­sible to make approx­im­ate distinctions.

I recom­mend using the fol­low­ing tiers and nam­ing con­ven­tions for cat­egor­ising dif­fer­ent types of influencers:

Learn more: The Influencers in Public Relations

THANKS FOR READING.
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Social Media Mechanics

• How Social Media Algorithms Rule Our Lives
• The Silent Switch
• Why Subscriber Counts Matter Less
• Why Social Media Algorithms Are Basic
• Dark Social: The Online Interaction We Can’t See

Social Media Psychology

• Social Media Naturals
• The Narcissistic Principle
• The Selfie Generation
• Emotional Maturity and Social Media
• Attention Spans in the Social Media Age

Social Media Management

• Social Media Must Be Managed
• The Follower Contract
• A Community Manager’s Job Description
• No Brand Community for You
• Critical Mass: How Many Social Media Followers Do You Need?

Social Media Issues

• The Social Media Complaint Department
• The List of Social Media Issues
• How Ghost Followers Destroy Your Social Accounts
• Social Media Myths in PR
• Facebook Zero: Your First Fix Was Free

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