I certainly don’t claim to be a social media expert but I’ve been learning a lot about the practice, etiquette and strategies within the online domain for the past few years. From running the Twitter and Facebook accounts for YSJ Connect and studentcooking.tv, to now Dance Music Manchester, Croatia Festival and of course my own, @SpamellaB, each brand has its own identity, rules and ways of pushing content and interacting.
As well as being involved in these various online presences, I’m constantly reading about and researching blogs about the subject to see how other brands make it work and are successful…while others are perhaps an example of what NOT to do. I came across one recently on Brick Marketing Blog thanks to the other half, @dmm_james, which really caught my attention and made a lot of sense, offering tips and advice on how to ‘do’ social media properly.
The blog highlights a crucial point: “If you want to use social media correctly to build a brand, communicate with target audience members, and improve SEO efforts, it’s necessary to have a strategy and goals in place. One important goal should be to get your social content Liked, Shared, +1’d, and Re-Tweeted by others. This will improve brand visibility, expand your reach in social media, build your own followers, and improve your social signals which have an impact on search engine ranking.”
However, there’s a danger here which Dance Music Manchester are always sure to avoid: make sure you stagger your posts! One of the biggest frustrations we see sometimes and which is highlighted in this blog, is people sharing the same tweet on every account at the same time. Not only does this clog up others’ feeds who may follow all accounts, it could lose followers and be missed out later in the day. Remember that you are competing with masses of others to fight for attention, so staggering posts will ensure it reaches more people with a higher chance of hitting the intended audience.
As it says in the blog, “For this reason it’s important to consider timing when posting social media content and stagger social media posts… It’s all about finding the right balance that will be most effective.” So, if you run a few accounts related to the same subject, remember that followers are likely to follow all, so don’t spam and instead, stagger retweets, shares and all the rest of it!.