Kelly Shepsko
Each month, I help manage social media accounts for about a dozen clients at any given time, where I scour the internet for powerful content that their followers will enjoy, analyze information about when they receive the most feedback on our efforts and actively work on improving their overall strategy. Anyone who manages a company’s social media understands how dynamic it is, with the need to keep up with evolving algorithm changes and provide the most engaging content to keeping up with follower trends. Social media management is time-consuming and requires a lot of upkeep to make sure your actions stay relevant in ever-changing platforms, but it’s necessary for marketers to dedicate their time to this—everyone is using it.
Yes, social media eats up a lot of your time and may be a challenge to keep up with, but the biggest challenge is keeping up the level of excitement and desire for your audience to follow and engage with your business. As humans, we have the tendency to lose interest quickly. The average attention span of a human has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 measly seconds in 2013 (you’ll find yourself counting to 8 seconds more and more often now, just like me), and with so much volume of activity spent on mobile devices and social media sites, it’s becoming more difficult to break through all the noise and reach the consumer. You constantly ponder, “what if my followers get bored of my posts?” or, “how do I put across my message without sounding too salesy?”… are you still following? Refocus, and meet me at the next paragraph.
Your followers may deem your content stale if you don’t take a proactive approach in consistently improving your social media content and strategy. Here are a few ways to create a sizzlin’ social media content schedule that will keep your followers engaged for this summer, and throughout the rest of the year, too:
Pull together your daily, weekly or monthly content schedule all at once.
This all depends on your posting frequency, but it’s much easier to accomplish an entire week of social media posts for your organization in one sitting at the beginning of the week than to manually log in each day and think of something spur of the moment. Not only does it make your project scheduling easier, but it helps you to follow a consistent posting strategy with a nice balance of the “80-20 rule” (scheduling 80% of content that doesn’t directly promote your organization and 20% that does). You’ll be able to better balance your content and get a good grasp of how much of each type of content to share, whether you’re mixing up news and informative posts or photos and videos. Content balance is key for social success.
Follow a strategy that is built from relevant content resources.
Before you post anything on social media, make sure you’ve established your purpose by following a predetermined posting strategy. What are you trying to accomplish? You most likely have the goal of informing your audience about the importance of your product or services, so you’ll need to share content that reinforces your own sales message. This doesn’t mean bombarding your audience with your sales pitch; it means sharing thought leadership articles that back up your cause.
When you craft your social content strategy, put together a list of online publications and websites where you can quickly source reliable content from. For example, our company shares a lot of content from reputable sites such as Social Media Today, Mashable, INC, HubSpot, etc. Having a list of websites at hand that promote thought leadership will make your life easier when it’s time to schedule content.
Know the best days and times to post for your industry.
The best times to post on social media vary for each platform and industry, but remember that research and analytics go a long way in ensuring the effectiveness of your campaign. Facebook business pages offer insights for what days and times your followers are most active; use this information to your advantage. LinkedIn and Twitter analytics give you engagement trends and number of page views per day. There are also numerous studies that report statistics on average user activity and behavior. Look at the numbers, test the waters and see what works best.
Post to the platforms that are effective for your business.
If you’re like me, you have an extremely hectic schedule and need to shave away extra time spent on projects wherever possible. When taking an approach to social media marketing, keep in mind that not every platform is going to be effective for your business—especially if you’re a B2B company. It’s critical to find out where your audience is active and then spend your energy on those platforms and other tactics that prove to be effective for your business. If your audience is B2B, research your ideal customers before posting; look at their websites and see what types of social media platforms they use, search for them on each platform and use the internet to search for data on each industry.
In addition to a sizzlin’ social media content strategy, another must-have for your business’ social media accounts is high quality branding portrayed with professional social media graphics (cover photo and icons) and optimized content for search. Refresh your social media accounts with our new “Beauty or Brains” package that allows you to quickly ramp up your marketing without a monthly commitment. Click below to view our current marketing promotions.
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