The Golden Rule for Social Media Marketing Content

When it comes to social media marketing it is extremely difficult to know what to say, and how you should say it. We worry about whether people will care, if it will interest them, and whether it will lead to them wanting to interact with you and your business, whatever the platform you and you market are operating on.

Although it doesn't encapsulate every principle in the marketing world, this simple rule can increase the quality of your content, whether it be blog articles you write or posts and comments on social media platforms.



Yes it is the common terms of snackability and consumability, (of which neither are real words). This rule will help you develop your content to the point where you can be confident in its worth and purpose.

Valuable Content

The first thing to ensure is that your content is valuable, that it is worthwhile. There is no point regurgitating meaningless unquantifiable information that doesn't add anything to the readers lives.
What is valuable for you is up to you, likewise what is valuable to your market is up to them. Therefore it is of paramount importance that you know your market, (as discussed in my previous post). When you know your market, what they want and need you can begin to determine what is of value to them.
It may be an article about fruit and veg tips for kids if you are a green grocer operating in a community with lots of young families or photos of the best coffee spots if you are a producer and roaster of coffee beans. For a law firm targeting families then you don't want to be sending them articles on the basis of business disputes and negotiation. Make sure that what you are posting and sharing with your community are things that are of value to them.
Don't just share for the sake of sharing.

Snackable Content

Secondly, your content needs to be easily consumed. This means 1. that it is easy to read and understand and 2. that it isn't too long.
In our fast paced world people don't have the time to read every 800+ word article that you are posting. Often they just want something that is going to able to be consumed in a matter of minutes, in fact, you may not even have the consumers attention for even one minute. Therefore it is of paramount importance that you are sharing information that the consumer can digest in the amount of time that they have available to read your content.


Finding the Sweet Spot

Creating valuable content is easy, although the problem is that it is often very long. Likewise producing snackable content is easy, although when it is it is often rather meaningless. Like a cheeseburger, snackable, but it isn't filling you up in anyway.
Therefore we have to find a way to meet in the middle, a way to share value in the short amount of time that we have consumers attention.
This often requires great creativity, so start thinking of ways that you can relay value in a very short amount of time. Think of using strong sentences and one liners that encapsulate your cause and a call to action, think pictures and videos, think of finding the sweet spot, always ask
How do I share valuable content that is easily and quickly consumable?

Facebook: Small Business Pages

Here are a few basic tips for you and your Facebook page.

Interact with Your Community

Social media is based upon social interaction, communicating, sharing and building relationships. On Facebook we have the opportunity to do that in many different ways. A few to get us started which are extremely affective are as follows;

• Follow like minded businesses, people, and others in the community you are operating in. Most towns and community groups have Facebook pages of their own, such as community boards.
• share with the community you are a part of.
• always respond to comments on your page
• comment on other pages posts, if you want people to interact with you, you have to first interact with them. 

Its not About You!

The art of posting on your page is something that is reasonably hard to tackle. What do I post, how do I post it and when do I do so.
These things are completely dependant on who we are trying to reach and communicate with. Every marketing campaign should begin with the preliminary question of: who is the target audience?

• who are they?
• what groups do they operate in?
• what do they care about?
• how do they talk?
• what do they need/want?

What we are posting should be all about what our audience wants hear, not necessarily what we want to say.

Therefore we can lead into the 1-4 posting ratio.

1-4 Ratio

When it comes to posting on most social media platforms the best rule of thumb is the 1-4 ratio. That is, 1 of your own posts to every 4 you have shared from another site, group, or organisation.
On social media people don't just want to be "sold to," they don't just want people yelling at them with sales items and promotions. If this is all you are posting them people will be very quick to "un-follow."

Pictures

Have them. Just posting words is meaningless. Advertising has transformed in the recent past from being a means of telling the consumer what a product does, to showing a consumer how the product makes them feel.
Consumers emotionally connect with photos, they relate and can get excited about a page that is colourful and interactive. There is nothing worse than a business page which just long paragraphs of monotonously written updates.
Throw some colour in there.

Doesn't that make you feel happy? :)