(click to tweet)
The amount of social media in the world can be overwhelming, from a personal point of view and for businesses trying to use social media to promote their brand.
Most people start using social media for fun, posting their thoughts and activities live, to express themselves and connect with friends. But this use of social media can be stressful and ineffective when applied to marketing and a business strategy. It’s intimidating, and you can feel the need to be continually promoting yourself and your business on all platforms, all the time.
Laura Roeder, scalable social media expert and founder of the social media management platform Edgar, says there is another way. In her words, “People get so caught up in following short term hacks that they forget the long term social media strategy.”
So what is a good long term social media strategy? Don’t post live and don’t be afraid to repeat content! This might seem counterintuitive, but only 5-10% of your audience are likely to see each individual post. It only makes sense that your posts should go out more than once. If you’re stuck creating each piece of content from scratch, your ROI will be much lower than it could be with recycled content.
A good rule of thumb is to have about three months of content in the backlog, so that you can repeat important content at least once a quarter. Edgar built onto this idea, by creating a library of your content to be recycled over time. This way, you can have continual content going out on platforms without needing to be constantly creating it. Edgar allows you to schedule posts in advance, and then save your live engagement for your audience. It’s a win-win!
So take a look at how effective your social media strategy is, and listen to this episode of James Swanwick Show for tips and ideas on how to get more traffic out of your posts.
Notes on the Show:
- The amount of social media in the world, and the seeming requirement to be continually on all platforms promoting yourself and your business, can seem overwhelming
- The archaic way of managing social media was to do everything live, posting at the moment you write something
- There is a significant difference in using social media for yourself (personal) and for a business
- Edgar built on the idea of creating a library of your content, that can be recycled over time, so that you have continual content going out on platforms without needing to be constantly creating it
- Most people start on social for fun. Coming from that angle, some people get nervous to move into business/marketing side of social media
- Understand how your brand comes across, how you want it to come across, and make sure that everything you post lines up with that
- Don’t be afraid to repeat content! In the context of marketing, you usually will not get a good ROI if you’re creating each new piece of content from scratch
- 5-10% of your audience will see one single thing that you post, so it only makes sense that it should go out more than once to up that percentage
- A good rule of thumb is to have about 3 months of content in the backlog, so you’re repeating things once a quarter. Some people succeed with much more frequenting repetition
- Don’t be posting live. Save that for your engagement with your audience. Schedule posts in advance, and then engage live
“People get so caught up in following short term hacks that they forget the long term social media strategy.” – Laura Roeder
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Resources:
LKRSocialMedia.com (Laura’s blog)