You won’t admit it publicly, but it’s OK. I’ll take care of it.

You LOVE Rick Astley.

No shame in it. Great pop artist from the 1980s who, despite being the punchline for countless jokes has always seemed like an easy-going, play-along-with-it kinda guy.

His most famous song, of course, is “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Contained within the lyrics is a roadmap to success in establishing thought leadership in social media.

Let’s examine a few lyrics to prove the point:

“You know the rules and so do I” – Social Media, quite frankly, has some rules. Common courtesy, polite discourse and give-and-take debate rules all. Link to your sources, tag appropriately, engage productively. Play nicely, my friends.

“A full commitment’s what I’m looking for” – To be successful in social media, you need to jump in head-first and stay neck-deep. If you don’t regularly contribute something of value, you’ll be left behind. That’s not to mean that you have to be connected 100% of the time. But when you do, it should highlight your thoughts and personality.

“I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling” – Be honest online. Be yourself. The more honesty you give, the more honesty you’ll get and you’ll build real professional and personal connections with people...which increases credibility.

“Never gonna give you up” - Don’t stop! Even if it’s hard and frustrating, keep on keeping on. You made a full commitment to blog or Tweet, right?

“Never gonna let you down” – With content, you’ll never make EVERYONE happy. However, give it your best effort, be it a Tweet, a video or a blog post. Give your all and be authentic to yourself and that will resonate with your growing community.

“Never gonna make you cry” – Understand that your audience is coming to you for guidance. They need help. Help them be better without insulting their previous attempts. Everyone is trying to improve, right?

“Never gonna say goodbye” – Full commitment, remember?

[Note: This post was inspired by this.]

Image Credit: "Rick Astley Tivoli Gardens" by Michael Alø-Nielsen - originally posted to Flickr as Rick Astley. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rick_Astley_Tivoli_Gardens.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Rick_Astley_Tivoli_Gardens.jpg