David Libby — May 31, 2018 A B2B technology client had a content calendar that showed what content assets were either in production or were slated to be published online. However, the calendar wasn’t full. This posed a problem for the social media marketer.
When addressed, the head of content directed the social media specialist to post content from the company’s archives when new content wasn’t available. The social media pro obliged. After all, if there wasn’t a consistent cadence of posts on social media, the company would look old, like it wasn’t active in the marketplace, right? Wrong.
The archived content was old. The messages were not current, not aligned with where the brand was at that moment. The quality of the content wasn’t consistent with what was being created at the time. It was like asking your today self to introduce your old self to your current friends. Um…
What was happening? That B2B technology company was posting too much. It was diluting its brand on social media.
For some reason, they bought into the many studies which seemed to say that B2B technology companies should be posting a certain amount of times on specific social media platforms, daily, weekly, etc.
What started happening was that their audiences could not discern what that company did. They also lost credibility with their Followers and were unfollowed, in the thousands. Too many messages and too much creative hurt and did not help their marketplace differentiation and position.
Here are tips on how to post enough on social and still be relevant to your audiences.
Take a Step Back
Don’t look at your content calendar from what you could post. Look at it from what you have to post based upon deadlines that align with your announcements. Are you releasing a product soon? Got a locked in release date? Are you announcing a partnership, new round of funding, new acquisition, new hire? If you take a step back and realign your social media with your public relations and marketing efforts, you won’t over post. You will be on plan.
Extend the Reach of Your Content
We used to think that when promoting a webinar on social, a social media marketer should post two weeks before the webinar date and once on the date of the webinar. Not true, if that webinar is of high value to your organization. That also applies to other assets. Use varying messages within the copy of your content to create multiple posts that all tie back to your overall message to drive engagement to the chosen live date. Extend the reach of your content to provide more value to your audiences and you will create more impressions to drive activation.
Go Niche
As a B2B technology public relations professional or marketer, you are not going to be able to have your messages always resonate with your entire audience. There will be times when your messages only pertain to a certain user group, an event, a particular set of people who only have purchased a license for one of your products, and so forth. Take advantage of this opportunity and go niche. In other words, carefully find the best keywords and hashtags to bring attention to this content on social media and target those contacts/influencers. Don’t overuse hashtags nor don’t over tag any person or company on social.
To be an effective social media marketer today, we must focus on the quality of content and to whom we are directing that content to. We have to get away from the mindset that more is better or less is more.
It’s more important that we strategically show how B2B technology companies are differentiated and positioned in the marketplace and avoid just trying to be relevant by being the most active voice on social media.
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