What I Learned About Social Media as a Full-time Facebook Missionary

I remember the day that Facebook came to my mission. I got on and saw that an old girlfriend was married and had just had a baby. Ouch. This was one of many learning experiences on my mission.

I learned a lot though about social media from this, and other experiences, that can apply to furthering absolutely anything on social media, from the gospel, to a business, to networking and building friendships.

1. Don't get sucked into scrolling. Have a goal

It was hard seeing the girl on my news feed. It would have ruined my productivity for the day if I hadn't already had a plan for the day. I was getting rid of strange old photos that my highschool self thought were good to post. If I didn't have that plan I would have spent the rest of the day wallowing in self pity and scrolling for happiness and fulfillment. Hint: happiness, fulfillment, or success isn't found further down your news feed.

2. Friends/followers are the lifeblood of success
Build your sphere of influence. You could write a book on this subject, and people have. I won't get into it too much, but I'll include links to a few of my favorite on the subject. The most important thing is that you want to target people who are interested. As a missionary I had a message for humans. Luckily, that was the only demographic using social media, so I wanted everyone. I now blog about making and saving money. Everyone wants more money, or at least to be smarter, so again, I appeal to everyone, but I try to specifically target millennials (hence my blog name). The more people you have that follow and friend you, the more people see your posts, and are open to influence to you. Some people don't friend people they don't know. Stranger danger is real, but you use the internet to network globally. I reach close to 100 countries with the work I do on different social media sites, and those are just the ones that I'm able to track. This is cool, not bad.

My target audience for this post is primarily the LDS community, hence the silly picture of chubby missionary me. It is also for those interested in improving their social media presence, as can be seen in the title.

    

3. Ask for referrals
I ask people for help on my blog. I ask people to guest author posts (If you're interested, let me know!). I ask people if they know of someone doing something interesting that I can highlight in my blog. I ask people to share this specifically with people who need or would be interested in the content.

When asking for referrals you can't expect everyone to have someone they know that can benefit. Everyone has someone, but they aren't thinking about that specifically. If they were, they would have already told you. Shotgun approach: If you ask enough people, you'll eventually get results.

4. Build Trust

It is not always the most comfortable experience to talk to your friends about feelings, let alone spiritual things. It's even harder still to send people you don't know or trust to go talk with people. You need to develop a positive relationship of trust with people. If a person trusts you they'll listen to you and value your opinion, whether that's on business or on the gospel. People will also feel confident giving you a referral.

5. Extend Invitations

On my mission the easiest Facebook invitation to extend was inviting people to like gospel centered pages. I would invite people to like the Joseph Smith page, or the different church topic, or church leader pages, so then they get a stream of gospel related material from another source, not just me. You want to extend invitations that will legitimately help people. I was recently asked (invited) to share a video to help a girl I know get a job as a social media consultant. I was asked to help share a high school friend's Kickstarter video. I have asked people to share different blog posts. When I share blog posts, like this one, I invite people to learn through some caption I add to the blog post. Sharing stories about your life is one thing, but you need to extend compelling invitations if you want to get things accomplished.

6. Be You

This one should be obvious. People look for a connection on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. People don't want to be friends with a company or a business, or a religious zealot who has no sense of humor. It's ok, or even good to post pictures of the funny thing your cat or baby or casserole did. It's even ok to show your fat picture as a missionary (I gained about 60 pounds, and this was at the heaviest). People connect with this. You seem like a real person when this happens, which is highly desirable. If your message or product will improve someone's life, and you want to have people take life advice from you, show them your life.

Most of these tools seem like common sense things, but things like the man bun are proof that people frequently ignore common sense. What message are you trying to promote on social media? Comment below, along with any new direction you might take to accomplish that!

Any other lessons you've learned about social media? Share those below as well!

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This is my invitation to act! Undoubtedly you saw this from a social media site. Help me share this! (This is my invitation. Am I following the tips I write about? I try to!)