Spread the Word: Why it’s always good to share wisdom

Make your social media strategy the sharing strategy.

Photo retrieved from Flickr, opensource.com

Growing up, we are taught to share. Share your toys, share your snacks… It’s a theme that most of us pick up on rather quickly. This life lesson reigns true all throughout our life, and just expands to include more things to share. So why do we share? Is it just because someone told us to? Successful sharing is two-sided. No, I don’t mean that it only includes one person giving something and another person taking it. Yet, it is a process of give and take from all parties involved.

Sharing doesn’t have to be an instant give and take on both sides. Since I was a child, I have always shared my things without ever asking for something in return. I have had a few people ask me why I do that, or tell me they will give me something to trade for what I have that they want from me. My thought is that it all comes full circle if you have a good relationship with that person. If I have enough money to buy us both a coffee today, I have no need for you to seek out money or coffee because I have those things now. Now this availability could change for me. Next week if I don’t have any money and you do, maybe then you can return the favor and buy me a coffee. That’s how my full circle sharing theory works. The point of this story is that if you build that relationship, you don’t need to expect instant returns, yet people will want to do things for you when you need it the most.

Don’t forget this piece of knowledge when thinking about your social media strategy. In today’s online community, it’s important that we are sharing our knowledge with others to gain their respect and trust in order to develop an overall strong relationship with them. This will help us get the return when we really need it. All of the information and help that we provide each other is only going to strengthen our community and the way that we approach our social media strategy.

Still not convinced? Here is a list of reasons why we should share the knowledge that we have in order to grow our business.

Sharing makes us shareable- If we are sharing our knowledge and ideas with others, they are going to be more likely to share what we post. Of course the information that you are providing needs to be beneficial to the reader, or this will be a useless attempt.
Sharing is an investment- As we have discussed earlier, sharing with others makes it much likelier that people will want to share with us. If they feel that we are providing them with a unique service or information than they are going to feel the need to give us something just as great in return.
Give it all you’ve got- Some people have the misconception that you should keep all of your knowledge to yourself in order to beat out the competition. The problem with this is that by keeping what you know inside you aren’t learning new things. Remember, you can give a man a piece of paper and a pencil, but you can’t make him an artist.
If you share it, they will come- The more you share information that people want, the more people will want to hear what you have to say. This brings you more followers and people that want to know more about the services that you provide.
Sharing brings returns- What do we all want? We want to know that what we are doing is bringing us returns on our investments. Luckily, developing a successful social media strategy can actually be rather affordable, so if we are getting great returns on our time then it is well worth it.