The Greatest Secret To Social Media Marketing Success

Michelle Obama Neal Rodriguez
Some of you may remember what I did to work with the 2012 Barack Obama presidential campaign.

Our work with the campaign generated substantial publicity on several mainstream media outlets, like Politico, NBC, and The Hill and famous and celebrity social media accounts, like Jennifer Lopez’s Twitter account and Michelle Obama’s Twitter account, to name a few.

Our historic chat with the U.S. First Lady positioned our client, Mamiverse, as a trusted source for presidential election coverage.

I performed fact checks on what the Republican presidential candidate would say during his stump speeches, and we exposed his lies. We ran coverage on advancements in the Obama campaign.

Millions of people consumed our content through election day of 2012. President Obama was reelected and ended his final term with high approval ratings. Now Michelle Obama is on a road tour speaking at tech conferences, like WWDC and Dreamforce, on how people can advance their careers using technology, and political pollsters and analysts are positioning her as the Democrat with the most potential to win the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

That’s a lot of success. How was I fortunate enough to be part of such a historic run?

You could read the details on Forbes, but I meet a simple standard when using social media that I didn’t spell out last time.

I simply use social media to make genuine friends. My work is my life. Many of my friends work in the digital space, and, while chatting for hours, eating empanadas and drinking over-caffeinated green tea with them, we end up working and building great things together.

But you can’t simply make friends with an ulterior motive in mind. Help people without expecting anything in return.

Let me repeat that: Help people without expecting anything in return.

It is unrealistic for me to say that every one you help is going to help you out in return. What does happen, nonetheless, is that if you help as many people as you can, unexpected opportunities will come to life. Many benefits that you sought and others will come to you.

Therefore, I don’t simply limit myself to following best practices using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social platforms to be successful. I make friends by using any medium available and by all means.

To me, everything is a form of social media. If people who are part of a community I want to befriend are at a conference, I am there cracking jokes with them. If they’re at a museum or junk yard, I’m there staring at dinosaur bones with our kids or convincing people to give me their cars to donate some proceeds to charities. Sometimes digital tools help start and tighten those relationships; sometimes digital exchanges aren’t required, for a genuine handshake, and my helping hand makes a friend for life.

So you should focus less on having to be on Facebook or Twitter, and concentrate more on how you’re going to support people on those networks and others with your expertise, company, and honest friendship.

I’ve always said that I am in the business of making friends. And I make friends by helping people. Many of those friendships have evolved into productive business partnerships.

I still feel a sense of satisfaction after nurturing the friendships that aren’t business-oriented. And that feeling is what drives me to keep doing what I do until I succeed in reaching a goal.

Find out exactly what you can do well, and perform that super power while helping someone else reach their objectives.

Can you design something for somebody? Can you introduce somebody to somebody? Can you drive traffic to your friend’s website? Can you help get him or her a client or a gig? Can you give your friend a ride somewhere? Can you give your friend advice? Can you share an empanada with your friend?

And again, don’t get frustrated if everybody you help doesn’t help you. It does not work that way. However, if one person does not help you, billions of people will. You just have to find them. Isn’t that why we’re here? Aren’t we here to find people with whom we can share our lives?