Updated January 11, 2017

A year or so ago, there was a great article shared with me about things we can learn from teens about about social media. To me, the article was spot-on. Point blank, the reason teens are better at social media than, well, anybody, is answered directly in the article as follows:

“Because teens aren’t on social media to promote or sell. They’re there for 1 main reason… To be social!”

The article reaffirmed some things in my mind about social media that we at Franchise Foundry execute on for both our franchise development and accelerated digital strategies clients, but many companies haven’t even begun to do, are afraid to and/or have no clue how to do. One thing in particular is integration across platforms. Another is community-building. And, another is avoiding brand regurgitation making sure to be social and to make it about the audience, not just about the brand.

The key, the true key is that businesses (and marketers) view social media solely as marketing while teens look at it as communicating (sharing information, interacting, engaging… developing the relationship whereby asking for something, a call-for-action, if you will, is normal to the relationship, it is not out of sync, it is not overstepping boundaries, it is not selfish – instead, it is earned! Yes, these are my four steps to social media success – share, interact, engage and then, only then have your earned the right for a call-to-action… and together they are quite effective as they’re all about communicating first, marketing second.