Public Relations professionals and marketing strategists know that in order to do our jobs to the best of our ability, we have to treat the profession as an ever-changing industry. With that being said, I attended a very informative talk this week on the things people need to focus on before publishing posts on social media.
Content
Content is king, but you must post this content with purpose. Start out with an old-fashioned mission statement that will give you direction to later fill in details. You also have to know something about your audience, so listen and send out discovery questionnaires to learn everything about these people. Once you discover who you are talking to, you can create personas representing the different types of consumers you are trying to reach.What you want your audience to do? Engage in conversation and get them to take an action on your behalf. Test content (messages and types) out on your audience in variations that include video, images, text. Once it's obvious what types do not connect with your audience, don't be afraid to purge the bad and introduce the new. Lastly, calendar everything. An automation content calendar is your friend so use it!
Time of Day
What are the best times of day to post content on social media so that your audience sees it? This is a very important question because the time of day you post truly matters to your business. If you receive no impressions, you receive no value and your time is wasted. The answer to the question is probably not what you think: it depends on your audience. Everyone does not look at their social media channels at the same time, so people really need to research their audience's social media viewing patterns and schedule posts to coincide with those times. If you manage more than one company's social media, or multiple channels for a company, you might want to make an audience viewing chart for reference.
Paid Ads
In today's social media world, you have to pay to play. This sentence refers to Facebook the most. Simply put, when Facebook went public it changed. Organic reach plummeted, and now, if you don't pay on Facebook, a lot of times your content is not seen. Sometimes, as little as boosting a post for $5 can make a difference. Facebook's algorithm, Edgerank, rewards you when you pay to boost a post. After you promote a post, every post that follows for an extended period of time, gets a lift. Start small and buy smart when it comes to promoting posts; figure out who you want to reach and why. As with most paid advertising, there is a threshold where Facebook ads are concerned and your posts can become saturated.
Channels
According to social media experts, Facebook and Twitter are not going away, but they are considered to be plateauing. Suggested reading on the plateau of Twitter is an article by The Atlantic titled, "A Eulogy for Twitter." On the other hand, LinkedIn has gotten a lot more interesting in the past 6-12 months. LinkedIn signs up two new members per second and around 40% of members check their LinkedIn account daily. The site just hit 300,000,000 users, made enhancements to company pages, and launched university pages.
Slideshare is a social media channel than a lot of people aren't familiar with yet, but it is highly useful. Companies often post presentations with detailed information of certain products on this channel. It's a good research tool when deciding to try a certain product or brand. Lastly, experts believe that blogs will once again trump other social media channels in the future. Let's face it, the content that really matters is the content that you control and the content you own. Blogging allows a person or company to show a more personal side and share knowledge that is important to them.
I'll leave you with a list of some great tech sites to check out on the web: mashable, techmeme, digg, reddit
thenextweb, buffer, and socialbro.
Be sure to follow Blake Killian, social media director, at Zehnder Communications, and the person who shared all of this knowledge with me, on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/blakekillian. Oh yea, catch me on Twitter too: Bridget Conrad: @bridgec17.
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