One of my favorite books is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. A lot of what he writes in the book applies to your interactions on social media. His advice can help you achieve your maximum potential on social media’s, and you can better deal with people on social media. Hence, you’ll learn how to win friends and influence others on social media.

Social media is changing the world. It is now part of our every day lives. It impacts our personal relationships, our entertainment, how we work, and how we study.

There are some brands that are taking Dale Carnegie’s advice to heart and are succeeding. For example, McDonald’s and Disney are some of the top brands on Facebook. These top brands are mastering Twitter. And these 12 brands have fantastic LinkedIn company pages.

How to win friends and influence others on social media

Here are seven tips, using Carnegie’s advice, on how you and your company can win friends and influence others on social media.

1. Arouse in the other person an eager want

Figure out what your customers really want from your social media pages. Why are they coming to your pages and why do they like or follow it? Do they like and share your content you post?

Is it because of conversation? Engagement with fans of similar interests? Discounts? Special offers?

To benchmark other top brands for ideas, discover why these top 30 brands have excellent social media strategies. And make sure you understand and apply the 7 Cs of a successful social media strategy.

2. Become genuinely interested in other people

Contribute relevant content on your social media pages to stimulate conversations. Make sure that each person who follows or likes your social media pages knows that the brand cares about them in a genuine way.

Your social media pages should be generating conversation among your loyal fans not spamming them with marketing messages that are irrelevant to them.

3. Be a good listener: Encourage others to talk about themselves

Update content consistently and ask a lot of questions. Asking questions is a sure way of getting them to talk about themselves. It is important to make sure that when you ask these questions that you listen so that you can ask better questions the next time.

While the number of people who follow or like your social media pages is important, those who actively engage with you is even more important for your brand.

4. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests

Why do people want to follow or become a fan of your social media pages? Why do they like your content? Learn what interests your target audience has beyond just the interactions with your brand. Find out their point of view.

Conducting research is important to really get to know all of the interests of your brand advocates. Throughout all of your social media platforms, you can get a bigger picture of what really interests your audience.

5. Make the other person feel important (and do it sincerely)

It is important that you generate new followers and keep your current followers happy. To keep them happy, recognize the people who create or share the most information about your brand. For example, create something where you encourage your followers to keep coming back for more and more.

Highlight on your social media pages, stories that represent your brand and your community. Perhaps develop a follower or fan of the week or month on your social media pages where you continually make your social media audience feel like they are an important part of everything you do as a brand.

6. Give honest and sincere appreciation

In social media, it is important that you give sincere appreciation. A simple “thank you” needs to go deeper. You need to give them something of value such as a free ticket, a coupon, exclusive access, gift certificate or a momento. Something creative to show them that you really appreciate them and are thankful that they are a brand advocate.

Learn why we follow brands on social media and what makes people buy from brands them on social media.

7. Throw down a challenge

Create a contest. Be creative. For example, you can create a user-generated content contest about why they are your biggest followers or fans. Or you can create a contest where they take a video or photo about using your product or service. Or create a contest with a large prize such as a trip, cash or meeting your brand celebrity. For inspiration, here are 50 ideas, tips and examples of social media contests.

Why do you follow brands on social media? How you win friends and influence others on social media?

What tips would you add to this list? What your thoughts on how to win friends and influence others on social media?