Making Good Social Media Content Choices

One thing we constantly remind our small children to do is, “Make good choices.” We do this as a way to teach them the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, or annoying versus engaging. Ironically this simple rule can also be applied to how you and your company use its social media content.

Do you annoy or engage your users?

This is a very important question because people are spending a lot of hours online and engaged with various social media sites. While some people have mastered ways to create interest and buzz, other people have the exact opposite effect which is not good for business. Let’s review both the bad and the good to make sure that your social media marketing efforts are not made in futility.

Ways Content Annoys

Over Posting – More is better right? No, this is not always the case. People do not want a bombardment of tweets, pictures, or posts every five minutes. By doing that you are becoming spam no matter how awesome your content is. Be selective with posts and aim to get the most out of each one; quality over quantity.

Self Promotion – Obviously you want to sell products, but every message should not be something sales related. Posting once or twice about a big sale is fine; posting daily for two weeks is not. You need to mix it up and actually provide things people want to see other than just whacking them with a “BUY IT NOW” post over and over. About one-third of social media users get annoyed by companies pushing sales on social media outlets. Remember, this is a way to interact and socialize.

Wasted Space – This goes hand in hand with over posting. Content is king no matter what the outlet. People don’t want to waste time reading endless tweets of how difficult it was to make coffee this morning or other useless data. Each post should provide value to a reader in some way, open up a dialogue, or lead to valuable content.

Engage, Don’t Enrage

Try these four tips to add more excitement to your social media:

• Contests – This is a top use for Facebook and other social media. Create an online contest or giveaway that runs regularly. Change up the format and keep users interested and engaged. Have customers help create new product ideas like the recent “create a flavor” campaign by Lays chips.
• Daily Deals – This is a very powerful way to ensure customers check in at least once a day. Offer a good daily deal on a product. One small business that sell craft beers promotes a new offering each day at 40% off which keeps his online and in-store traffic up each day.
• Customer Interaction – Open up the conversation for problems and concerns and then solve them. People love to read about problems, drama, and the like. They also like to complain and be heard. So take those aspects and own them by providing customer care and encourage reader communication.
• Sharing – Encourage customers to share stories and recommendations that involve your products. People like to read about personal experiences and recommendations over commercials and obvious self-promotion. Let satisfied customers promote you themselves.

Make Good Choices

You need to own your brand no matter what the location. The online community is a very powerful thing and should be considered carefully as you look to push your brand into social media. That means using this valuable tool as a way to interact and be interesting and then let them promote and sell you. It shouldn’t be a forum for pushing products and service otherwise they will stay away which is the exact opposite reaction you want.