One of the most common social media conundrums for those first starting out with social media is what is the right amount to post?
Social media commentators suggest that you have to inundate your audience with multiple updates throughout the day, while others say just keep it very personal for the people you know. Of course, the truth for you will fall somewhere in between.
Social Media Posting Pitfalls
One of the side effects of our digital lives of the last 20 years is the evolution of spam. Spam is messages that are part of mass distribution that have no relevance to us personally. This is to be avoided in social media, just as it is any other kind of marketing. Whatever you post must be relevant to your audience.
Social media spam is compounded when the posts are not consistent with the network they are posted to. Posts need to be customised according to the social network you are using. Every platform attracts a very specific fan following that sets the culture and tone of conversation. You cannot get away with having the same kind of content everywhere.
LinkedIn is a business site and not interested in your views on football, Facebook is an informal site and not interested in a project you have delivered at work. But what all platforms now have in common, is the value of posting with images. Good quality images with your posts, such as memes, infographics, slide decks and videos will increase engagement.
The Case For Multiple Posts
The challenge with all marketing through a mass channel is getting noticed and social media is no different. The first step to be noticed in social media after setting up your accounts is post regularly. There is no value in waiting for a single fabulous piece of content to post.
As well as being relevant and appropriate to the network, your social media feeds need to be vibrant and often. Your customers are checking social media throughout the day, every day. If your aren’t sharing regularly, you will easily missed, especially on a platform like Twitter.
When you don’t have your great content to share, share other peoples. Find great content that is relevant to your customers that you know will be interesting to your audience and share that. Share it throughout the day to keep your social media feeds alive and vibrant.
Using this approach retains your audience and demonstrates your relevance fro when you have your own content to share.
The Case For One To One Posts
Many firms are just as successful at using social media and keeping their posts to an almost one to one activity, I am thinking especially Twitter and LinkedIn.
Rather than relying on sourcing interesting posts and sharing their own content, they actively seek out and engage with their customers. Naturally this seems to apply to small firms that have a distinct customer base, perhaps an accountancy firm or wealth manager, but I have seen it work successfully for people with sales or account management responsibility in large firms. That is because this approach is about nurturing a defined community.
It isn’t about scale or finding new customers, but about deepening and maintaining current relationships. Just as the mass content producer allocates some time to finding and sharing interesting content, this approach requires time to build lists, join groups and track the people that are most relevant to you.
The Ultimate Social Media Approach
As I said at the beginning, the truth for your social media success will be somewhere between these two approaches. The most powerful way to operate in social media is adopt both and find your own balance.
Share interesting social media posts a few times a day across your networks that will get your audience talking.
- Find images and videos that they can like and share.
- Share your own content regularly.
- Look for the people in your audience that are most important to you.
- Follow them and comment/share their posts.
The bottom line is, the more useful and engaged in social media you are, the more useful and engaged social media will be come for you to generate business.
