Last year I heard the unfortunate news that Stephenen Covey had died. A father of nine and a grandfather of fifty-two Steven has a large family to carry on his legacy.
The powerful strategies Stephen taught, like the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People in this post, continue to live on strong as well.
When I was in school I read Stephen’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and his strategies have stuck with me ever since.In this post I take Stephen’s 7 Habits and show specifically how these traits are present in highly successful people on social media.
Habit 1: Be Proactive
You can’t just put up profiles and expect people to start flocking to you in droves. You need to be proactive.
Here are a few different ideas for being proactive on social media so that before long the results will start rolling in.
- Post fresh content daily
- Schedule content ahead of time
- Actively build new connections
- Focus on continuous positive improvement.
- Take initiative and realize that your decisions and actions are the primary determining factor for effectiveness in social media.
Find the times that works best for you and take action to improve your social media results. Be responsibility for your choices and the consequences that follow.
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ~Steve Jobs
Make sure to be clear and specific about the social media goals you have. How many followers and likes do you want to achieve? Set a date Of course quantity of followers is a determining factor in success but so if the quality of the connections you are able to create.
Envision the ideal characteristics of successful social media brands for your business.
To achieve these will you need to outsource? Most goals are more easily achieved when others help so if and when you get others involved make sure to share the end you have in mind with them as well.
Create a mission statement for your social media goals and review it often.
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Prioritize, plan, and execute your week’s tasks based on importance rather than urgency.
Having plenty of Twitter followers is a great asset for your brand and can help you achieve success, but any business will starve without traffic, leads and sales.
The first thing you should do is create a webpage where you can capture leads and link to it within your Twitter bio. Define the goals that are essential for you to succeed, and use social media to help you achieve the goals that matter most.
Habit 4: Think Win-Win
Genuinely strive to help other people succeed on social media and more often than not this win-win attitude will reciprocate and come back to help you.
When you follow or like someone and they follow or like you back, this is win-win.
When you share someone else’s content and they do the same for you, this is win-win.
I’m sure you get the point. 
A “win” for everyone involved is a much better long-term solution than if only one person in the situation had gotten their way.
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
Use empathetic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you.
Don’t just be a broadcaster, be a communicator. On Twitter use search to find conversations that matter to you, and get in on them. Being a thought leader does not mean putting other people down, but exists in engaging with a conversation and shedding your own light on the topic at hand.
Asking questions are a great way to get feedback and spark discussion, and they work well on Facebook and Twitter.
Position yourself as an expert by starting an “Ask me anything” thread on Facebook where you are around for a set amount of time to answer any questions about the topic at hand.
Habit 6: Synergize
Combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork.
On Twitter you can engage with others on your team to create a #Hashtag trend.
Go to tweet ups and meet other people in real life. Although social media is an awesome form of communication it is no substitute for real face-to-face interaction.
When working with others online in person conversations are not always possible since people are often half a world a way. Still you can spark synergy with your close connections through regular communication. Phone calls are great and Skype video chats are even better.
When you work with others you can create ideas and achieve goals that exceed what either of you could have come up with alone.
Habit 7: Sharpen the (Social Media) Saw
Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle.
For social media this means that you will need to continually renew your content and connection building efforts to get continually new and improving results.
This means investing into improving your social media knowledge today so that you can benefit from this knowledge into the future.
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