Success on the Internet

Do You Want to Excel in Social Media? Don’t Do That — Do This Instead.

What I learned from Gary Vaynerchuk's social media strategy recommendations.

Hi Reader, it's great that you stop by. You don’t need to waste your time reading this article. Do you know?

We agree; we both got better things to do than wasting time reading useless stuff. Right?

But you know, the thing is, people with many claps and followers make a lot of money.

We both could need that, true? Just think about Charlie D’amalio on TikTok; just with stupid dances, she made millions.

And let me tell you something, it is not the content; influencers get paid because they have many likes and follows.

So making money on the internet is simple — we both need just like and follow. Right?

Let’s make a deal. You follow my profile now on Medium and clap 50 times for this article. And I guarantee you, I will follow your profile and like everything you write — every single article will get 50 claps.

You don’t need to write smart, hard, or wise — I will clap anyway. Just push out 100 words — and I clap.

The algorithm will like that. People like Tim Denning seem to make 10,000–50,000 Dollars per month. And the best thing is, he has only 140,000 followers — not millions like D’amalio. And people like him or Charlie D’amalio make decent money online.

We probably just need to talk 10,000 people into following us, and we make a decent 6-figure-income.

Isn’t that great?

So like and follow.

What Won’t Work on Social Media

Have you ever heard such a suggestion? I get DMs like that since I went online back in 1994. Yes, it’s true social media wasn’t there, but other platforms existed that promised making money.

I remember a platform for product reviews, yet, I forgot the name. The idea was to get product reviews from people. It is what influencers are doing daily on youtube these days.

While working on my master’s degree, I was reviewing products and writing comments. And guess what people said to me?

You review mine, I review yours — follow for a follow.

This was a failing strategy 25 years ago, and it still is.

Why?

It sounds great initially, and it also provides quick results, but — and here it comes — it creates an expectation that won’t work long term.

When you have promised 10 people to like their content when they like yours is doable, but just imagine your profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, TikTok, youtube, and medium get traction…

It means that hundreds, thousands, or millions of people start following you.

You would need to like their content every day, which obviously won’t work as my and your day have only so much time in it — like 24 hours.

Once you stop liking the people’s content you promised to like, some if not many of them might feel frustrated — as you obviously broke the deal. And they will just walk away with the negative feeling of being lied to or betrayed.

So, if that won’t work, what can we do instead?

I just make actions without any false promises attached to them. In fact, I don’t promise anything. Instead, I have some business offers online, and anybody who wants to do business with me can ask me for an offer.

Here are the insights I gained over being 26 years on the internet. It’s my perspective from a user. So far, I never strived for amassing millions of followers but wanted to reach out to the world to like-minded people and engage with them in areas that I am particularly interested in.

And it works well for me.

What Success Did I Achieve?

I want to frame my suggestions with my background to help you understand where I am coming from.

Over the years, I have put together more than 10,000 followers on various social media channels like

• Linkedin
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Youtube
• Podcast
• Tiktok and
• Mailchimp

The majority of these contacts are on Linkedin, Facebook, and my mailing database. You can find it on the overview at my Linktree.

The podcast started creating its own audience in the last months. What I learned is that getting an accurate overview of the Podcast performance is challenging as different directories calculate the key figures differently. I haven’t found a tool yet that aggregates the data.

Coming from M&A, Finance, and Entrepreneurship, I never had the goal to maximize contacts.

What intrigued me were three things.

• Engagement rate: I believe having an audience engaged and interacting with the content, and each other has more value than the absolute number of followers. I know profiles with 100,000 followers, and when they post, nothing happens. Other profiles with a few hundred followers have a few hundred likes and comment whenever they post something. I consider the second a success.
• Marketing: The most astonishing thing is that social media creates a marketing channel for free. Before the internet, producing video, radio, or printed content was expensive and difficult. Today, all I need is an iPhone and a Laptop, and I can create written, spoken, or filmed content whenever I want. And the great thing is — I can broadcast it for free.
• Providing value: I like helping people. Social media is another possibility to provide help. My focus topics are entrepreneurship, financial literacy, self-development/health, and philosophy/martial arts. Whenever I gain insight, I sit down and write or film a post, which positively impacts my business. As a consultant, I need to have a structured mind, and by having to think through the content on social media, I can improve my consultancy approach that generates cash flow. A triple win for everybody.

I see social media as a great possibility to create new business relationships and deepen existing ones. Which I believe is a natural approach as my core business, aka cash engine, is b2b and not consumer-oriented.

The following suggestions come from the above-mentioned perspective of creating a fellowship with a high online and offline engagement rate that converts into revenue.

Meaningful Likes AKA Claps on Medium

For my core business, I need to do a lot of research online and offline. Influencers provide many valuable resources online:

• Point of views in the form of posts
• An article like on Medium with links that lead to their sources
• Podcasts
• Youtube Videos

Whenever I come across content on a platform with a like button, I integrate it into my research process.

1. I read or view the content — entirely. It means taking the 5 to something minutes to really go over the content, consume and digest it.
2. Some content resonates with me, and it’s this vibrate feeling of bliss and positive thoughts after engaging with the content. Whenever I feel that I have a genuinely positive reaction, I hit the like or clap button.

With that approach in mind, I realized two things in my life:

• Pushing the like button creates a brief, thoughtful moment in my life. It means I have to spend a couple of seconds thinking about the content and looking inwards to find out what it created in me. A moment of contemplation, which tips me a bit in a different direction of which I am sure it is a positive tip
• I hope — I never verified it — that any content creator enjoys seeing likes coming in. Hopefully, it creates a similar moment like I experienced: Adding a bit of a directional input for the creator to integrate the resonance in the future work.

I believe that is the first step towards success on social media:

Engaging with the content of creators in a meaningful way

Yes, it is true — just pushing the like button doesn’t create a relationship. I can hardly imagine many people recognizing each like. Especially the most successful creators like Gary Vaynerchuk or Charli D’Amelio — it is impossible.

It definitely gives them a bit of directional input on what content they should focus on and which content doesn’t fly.

How to integrate it:

• Don’t skim through content online.
• Take your time and consume the entire post.
• Take a second to think about the resonance it creates in you.
• If it’s positive, push the like button.

Comments:

For those who are happy with consuming content, the like button is the only thing they need to do. It helps their favorite creator understand what content they should develop more, creating value on the consumer level.

Those amongst us who want to engage more with creators — we have to take it up a notch or two.

So, in my opinion, the next step is leaving a comment. And this is when the relationship-building phase begins.

Those creators who don’t have a highly engaged community but frequently post definitely notice the comment. It is up to them what they make out of it.

So far, I got an excellent reply rate, which might be well above 90% — not really calculated; it is based on experience without running the maths.

I do see one thought popping up right now:

Well why 90%?

It probably works with creators who have less than 100 followers, as I can’t imagine that comment on famous people’s pages makes them going and responding to what I write.

And you are right. I never had a creator like Gary Vaynerchuk or Joe Rogan respond, and with other famous creators, it could well be that one of their employees responded in his name. But, and that’s the point also a response of one of their follower's counts.

Creators with millions of followers are not the target with comments; it is their audience that I want to address.

So what is the benefit of taking time to leave a well written thoughtful comment?

1. It helps me to integrate what I have consumed into my thinking. I have to sit down and write something. While working on my master's degree, I realized that I remember something I have read better when writing a summary. So the first reason is really selfish. It helps me memorize
2. Leaving a comment is an action that other people notice. I read very often through the comment section of an article. After reading the content, I love seeing what point of view other people add. Sometimes I click through to a person who left a comment I really enjoyed reading to find out who this is.
3. After leaving a comment, the likelihood of the creator, one of his employees, or another consumer responding to the comment increases. Sometimes very nice and helpful discussions evolve out of leaving just a comment, which further down the road created a meaningful business relationship.

I see social media similar to networking events in real life: Thousands of contacts might not lead anywhere but must come to the one person who converts into a customer.

It is similar to social media as leaving one like and one comment won’t instantly push sales and revenues, but it helps to find the people who are willing to pay the price for services.

How to integrate it:

• Whenever you have some time left, write a comment.

Be Positive in Your Comments.

There are many ways to engage with content — some take it positively, some go down the negative route, others just don’t engage.

Everyone must decide what works well in their lives. I like the way Dale Carnegie put it:

“Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn — and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”

When I read through some threads of hatred after posting her own opinion, I always really don’t understand people.

We are all human, and I can tell that sometimes I forgot the rules Dale Carnegie set out as a recommendation to create meaningful relationships.

The result was always the same — the relationship got a hit, and some ended, mostly for no other reason than a certain rush of emotion — writing or saying something in the heat of the argument. And as it is — words send us a Mail or spoken aloud cannot be taken back.

So at all expense, think twice before posting anything. The kind of content I want to post to have a chance of creating a relationship is:

Gratitude:

The simplest response to the content of a writer is simple: Thank you. It doesn’t take much time after reading through, and when I get a simple thank, you message it makes me feel a bit better.

So when I enjoy a video, an article, or something similar, why not just write.

• Thanks for sharing
• Thank you for sharing your insights
• Thanks for putting it online. Much appreciated

Compliments:

How do you feel when someone says:

You look great today

or

Good that you are around. I enjoy your company

At least it makes me feel good, and I really never was angry with someone who complimented me. It was always quite the contrary, and it pushed the likeability score of a person northwards.

And trust me, meeting people who make compliments once in a while is rare, both in private and business life.

When I have more time available, I write a compliment, which I believe combines well with gratitude.

Meaningful interaction:

This is my third level of interacting with a creator, and it is the one that takes some time.

When I read a text or a video that resonates very well with me, I write a longer text that contains either

• an anecdote from my life or
• who I plan to integrate the advice or what I saw in my life

It works mostly well with educational content; entertaining content mostly I leave at the like and gratitude level.

On the one hand, it might add a different or additional perspective to the content I have just consumed, which might be interesting for the creator or people who read the contents.

The value brings into my life that it helps me to remember what I just learned. It basically is similar to what Sinem Günel recommends, and I write about

• How I can use the advice
• Why I will use it and
• When I will use it

In the last 30 years, my experience helped me memorize and integrate things into my life. Yes, I know that social media didn’t exist back in 1990, but journaling did.

But what if someone posts stupid stuff?

I believe everybody knows that moment when a post pushes a button in us, not the good ones that make the person laugh, and I am talking about the terrible ones that initiate hate and anger.

Such things happen, sometimes for no reason, sometimes because of bad past experiences, or sometimes just because it is a stupid piece of content.

And the little devil in every person screams and shouts.

Throw it right into his or her face and state how idiotic the post is

Is it smart to that? Definitely not — it is like Dale Carnegie said above. Just don’t do it.

What can you do instead?

• Nothing: If you don’t have anything positive to say, say nothing
• Write your reply and let 24 hours pass before you post. Read your reply and re-write it.
• Ask a question. What is the reason for your statement? Why do you see it that way?

How to integrate it:

• Whenever you read content, spend some time and comment.
• Thank you (Gratitude)
• Compliment and
• What change it will bring to your life or an anecdote
• If you don't have anything positive to say, just say nothing.

Follow the Creator

When a piece of content resonates with me, I check out the creator's other posts, and sometimes I see that she provides advice that adds significant value to my life.

Firstly it helps the creator have more impact as the number of followers still seems to be one of the most important metrics on social media marketing.

Secondly, it also helps me get more content from the creator that I believe helps get the right direction in my life.

One of the best examples is Podcasts. I started listening to Podcasts regularly in 2020 while running — and I do run almost every day for 1–2 hours.

Following the Podcasts automatically delivers new episodes to my mobile phone and creates a perfect running experience. This morning I was out for a run listening to the Podcast “We study Billionaires” and got a great update on the US Economy in Episode 327.

Pushing the subscribe or follow button alone doesn’t help much in getting more followers. Still, I also like to comment and show gratitude and appreciation to some creators continuously.

Whenever I post something, they comment back, and sometimes it creates a nice small conversation that other followers notice. Sometimes I realize my followership in one of the social media channels is going up.

How to implement it:

• Follow creators who post content that falls into your niche and area of expertise to get noticed whenever they post new stuff.

Sharing is caring

The problem I identified with the increasing amount of content I consume is that it becomes challenging after a few days to find the content again.

For the unique pieces of content that I want to see more often, I switched gears.

In the past, I bookmarked them and came back whenever I wanted to watch them again.

The downside was it didn’t do anything to create additional momentum for the creator or me.

So I started to share unique content to my own social media channels and link back to the creator's profile. The comment I write with the sharing button is following the scheme I described before:

• Showing gratitude
• Complimenting the creator
• and adding a meaningful reason why I shared the content (well, not always, sometimes I am running out of time and leave it at sharing, but I do my best to change that).

When someone is already an expert with a larger following, sharing is like a quality stamp on another creator's content. Most of the time, it is noticed by the team of the creator.

When I listen to a podcast I enjoy and hear something meaningful, I post it on social media. The School of Greatness is one of these Podcasts.

I run, listen to an episode, and stop and write down my Twitter thoughts when inspiration hits me. The great thing is, sometimes I get a like and a re-share by Lewis Howes team — or himself — hard to tell.

And the result: On or the other people started following me on Twitter or other channels.

How to implement it:

• Whenever you write a comment, you can additionally share the content to one of your profiles and just copy and paste the comment.
• It creates additional momentum for you and the creator.

Know Your Lane

Speaking of niche and area of expertise, I strongly believe that is the most important pre-requisite to start creating lasting success on social media.

Know your niche and the topics you want to learn more about.

Throwing out random likes and follows in a diversified field of topics won’t create momentum.

But, when the action is focused on 3 to 5 topics, and someone continuously comments, likes, and shares content, it creates a great profile on social media channels, and other people see what it is all about.

Just sticking to one topic was never for me, so I created my activities around:

• Business and Entrepreneurship
• Investing
• Financial Literacy
• Health and Martial Arts
• Self-Development and Philosophy

I cherish all of these topics for about 30 years: I read books, work in these fields, got many degrees and certificates in all these areas, and I do my best to stay in my lane although I am genuinely curious about learning new things.

How to implement it:

• Sit down and find the guiding thread in your life. What is it that your attention is drawn to?
• It is not necessary to already have certificates or educational background in the niche areas. Knowing that you want to stick to these areas for a few years is enough.
• Mastery comes with time automatically.

Create Content

The ultimate weapon. Become a creator yourself. The previous steps are nice to start creating momentum, but only when you start writing, filming, or recording yourself can your success on social media start taking off.

It is not only on social media, but it also helps people you know already in real life to understand better who you are and what you love doing.

Initially, I was anxious about not being good enough and worthy of posting videos, written and audio content.

I am no journalist or author. Then I came across Gary Vaynerchuk, and in his productions, he regularly talks about people's insecurity.

“Mastery comes with practice,” he says, and I completely agree with these words.

Thanks to him, talking about abandoning my own insecurities and creating helped me get the necessary push to start creating.

It was somewhen probably in 2016 that I started to sit down, define my 4 niche areas, and start creating.

After about 4 years, I have

• A podcast with 29 episodes and 3 in the making (started in 2020)
• A youtube channel that I didn’t do much with since 2009 and started populating in 2020
• Medium — same article 126 in a year.
• And Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that I mostly use for pushing content from Podcast, Youtube, and Medium.

How to implement it:

• Forget your insecurities
• Mastery is a process.
• Start creating today

My bottom line is

Social Media works well

I am very grateful for the advice from people like Gary Vaynerchuk, who said

Start creating 64 pieces of content today. Everybody needed to start somewhere, and wasn’t perfect with the first piece of content

It is so true. Summing up my experience, to make social media work, I would do the following:

• Define your niche — just your 5 core areas of interest
• Search for creators in that niche
• Identify 2–3 role models for each topic.
• Follow these creators
• Like their content
• Comment showing gratitude and appreciation
• Leave a meaningful comment when you have time.
• Develop a business model for your niche areas that people can also engage with you commercially, like selling products or services
• Be patient

My core business is consulting in the life science industry, building, investing in, and running companies. Since 2016 I have increased my marketing footprint on social media and created real-life events.

And I realize in 2020 that it helped me a lot to overcome the problems of the pandemic.

I just can emphasize what Gary Vaynerchuk says constantly:

Start creating — NOW

Since 1999 I am an executive, advisor, and coach for companies in various industries. I am specialized in Corporate Development and Finance, from seed rounds to IPO level, and focused on life science since 2006.

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