In case you haven’t heard, content is still king. You can come up with the best strategy and use the most innovative tools but without good content, you’ll just be talking to yourself. To participate on social media, every brand/company/organization must become a content producer either by creating original content or by finding and sharing existing content.
• Use what you’ve already got
Review all possible sources such as blogs, photos, videos and anything on your native website as well what you’re sharing on other popular social sites like Pinterest, Tumblr and YouTube. Content is repackage-able. Not all of your fans or followers may have seen it when you posted it originally, so it’s okay to reframe it and re-publish it occasionally.
• Give your audience something of value
Social is about sharing. What are you giving your audience? Is this useful information? Entertaining commentary? Does it allow the audience to give feedback? Always ask, “How is this content serving them? What do they get out of it?”
• Plan ahead
A strategic plan that outlines the business goals of your social media efforts, the types of content you will publish to reach those goals and how success will be measured, will keep things in focus. *See content chart below
• Produce and evaluate content on a regular basis
Using the key metrics you defined in your strategic plan, evaluate what’s working and what needs to be tweaked or removed. (More on this topic in an upcoming post about “Following a Content Cycle”)
• Make sure the content is shareable
While this is obvious, it’s often overlooked. Any content you produce should come with easy ways to share it by including social sharing buttons and open graph tags.
The Context Mix
With multiple departments all weighing in on social media messaging, establishing the right content mix is critical. Here is an example of a content mix chart – customized for various goals and brands.
If you can tie the content categories to measurable goals, you should be able to adjust the content flow and see how it drives results.
Come back for next week’s topic: Don’t Over Publish
To read more and catch up here is a look back on Series #1
