Most people on social media blast messages that would interest them – and forget that their messages are supposed to interest their fans and followers. Oops. Big oops!

But it’s not so easy to figure out what kinds of things your fan base likes or would even want to hear. Lucky for you, there are a few simple options at your disposal – and they’re free. You can always pay for listening tools that allow you to follow trends and hash tags, but most of us are pretty simple and just need to have a little information to make a big difference.

Social Media as Research Tool

So many people miss the opportunity to find out more about their fans, and it’s right at their fingertips! In Facebook you can simply type into that nice white bar at the top “Interests of people who like (enter your page name here)”. I know that the top 3 interests for my fan base are: 1) Real Estate 2) Tim Horton’s and 3) Hockey. You can’t have a more Canadian fan base than that, eh?

On the side navigation bar, you will then be able to find their favourite movies, books, game – pretty well anything. And as long as they have entered that into their profiles on Facebook, well, you’ll be able to see the most valuable thing: what makes them tick. So when I really want to make things rock and roll, I’ll talk about real estate. And lo and behold! It works!

Twitter can be an amazing tool for you as well. You can simply log in and in the search bar along the right top, type in anything you like and pop! Out comes the people and tweets that are going around about that word or hash tag. If I’m ever stuck on finding great content, but I know the topic I want to post about – I head on over to Twitter, type in the keywords and blam! I get the most recent and most shared stuff. Easier than Google, and often more relevant.

Social media can be your guide to providing better content, that will get more shares and comments, enabling you to build solid relationships. Don’t just be there to “be” there. That’s cheating and cheaters never win. Don’t buy leads because then you’ll get all the wrong readings on interest and motivators.

Build authentic, genuine profiles and the people who love that will come to you.

Good luck and have fun!

Rebecca