The 3 Big Secrets For Success On Social Media

Life

2. Be Unpredictable

“I like to play unpredictable characters, and I like to be unpredictable in what movie I’ll do.”
~ Jeremy Renner

Your Social Media aka. your own version of your brand will thrive most on you doing the unexpected. What makes people watchable be it politicians, movie stars, entrepreneurs, or social media gurus is their ability to somehow remain mysterious and also make everyone wonder as to what is coming next. You have to go on instinct and trust your gut. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have definition to who and what you are. But what if your unpredictability gave definition to your “Brand”? There’s that word again. Whitney? She’s off being authentic and unpredictable I’m sure. By doing things based in your core, and by having your own mind and not following the pack, or a set corporate structure, you are in essence making your own rules. That is interesting. That is…watchable.

In another post of mine “The Curious Case of the Contemporary Celebrity” I discussed author Elizabeth Currid-Halkett’s eye-opening book “Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity”. In it, she discusses a friend of hers “M” who has gained a rather large following on social media for no other reason other than people find “M” interesting. She writes:

“M is a celebrity not because he’s successful in media. M is a celebrity because his Facebook and Twitter profiles are more interesting than everyone else’s (at least for me, and apparently most of his friends). Part of this celebrity rests on his constant status updates and sheer determination to be noticed. But within this context of abundance, his updates (where he’s traveling, his thoughts on the world, what he ate for lunch) become individually interesting. M spends an awful lot of time making himself seem more exciting and more fabulous than everyone else. M projects his celebrity to the public which is exactly what any other star who is interested in media profiles and public interest does as well. His celebrity is a result of his active cultivation, and social media provides him this opportunity. Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace demonstrate the purest form of cultivation of celebrity because, for the most part, their entire purpose is to feed us unessential personal information. However, because celebrity is not meritocratic, it is predicated completely on us remaining interested in them as people, based on what they tell us about themselves.”

Mysterious? Interesting? Yes. But that comes from being authentic and unpredictable. Believe it or not it’s my belief that structure and “Brand” form because of a persons ability to tell a story. The structure in and of itself is the story. If a story was “Jack drove the car home.” or “Sue ate pancakes.” everyday that wouldn’t be a very interesting story. But when your reader doesn’t know what they’re going to get AND if you are connected and being yourself, well that makes for an interesting read. Social media is no different than literature. It’s based in human connection and curiosity about what is coming next.

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