The Austin-American Statesman's Social Media Awards nominations have begun. Nominees must live in the central Texas area (sorry Baltimore Firefighters Union, I'm sure you are an outstanding organization, but your nomination has been deleted now). If you find the two votes I've made so far (one of which consists of a verse from Sexy Bitch), it becomes clear that I don't take these awards seriously, to say the least. But it did make me think about the people who inspire a lot of response in the form of votes.

When I get a Twitter follow from someone I don't know, I check their feed. If it's loaded with all self-promotion of their own blog and business, I never follow back. I'm not interested in anyone who's only interested in themselves, and this is a key point that too many businesses miss. Social media isn't an advertising platform, it serves best when used for engagement. And the top nominees in the Statesman awards understand that. They engage with and promote others more often than they do themselves. And it works because it gets those others invested in wanting to promote them in return. See how easy? Engagement.

You'd think this would be an easy concept, but I still seeing businesses getting this wrong like crazy. Just because someone hits the follow button doesn't mean they're listening to you or they care. A better metric is to see how many interactions you're actually having, and even better, if any of your followers ever care enough to promote you.

Smacks of effort, huh.