Content is vital to leveraging your company’s popularity and reputation, while social media provides the ideal platform for supporting that process. So it should almost go without saying that you should be integrating all of the content on your home website and partner sites with your social media site. You don’t need to use your Facebook profile as the dumping ground for every iota of data you put up on the web, but you should allow visitors to your social media site to easily access content they could be interested in.
Content is expensive, so multiplying the impact of your articles, videos and information is a cost-effective strategy for most businesses. Producing informative or engaging content takes hard work which means that you are investing time and money in its creation. You want to make the products of your efforts as widely available to as many of your target consumers as possible.
There are some guidelines to follow when integrating content with social media.
The right content can help a business take off. If one of your videos goes viral you could be looking at an enormous amount of free publicity. That isn’t going to happen very often, but you should be producing material that has that goal in mind. In any case, producing relevant videos, images and information will keep your target consumers interested in your social media site and enthusiastic about your brand.
Content is expensive, so multiplying the impact of your articles, videos and information is a cost-effective strategy for most businesses. Producing informative or engaging content takes hard work which means that you are investing time and money in its creation. You want to make the products of your efforts as widely available to as many of your target consumers as possible.
There are some guidelines to follow when integrating content with social media.
- Content generation – There are numerous ways to create content. You can repurpose videos from a seminar at an expo or ask customers to submit images of your products in use. You should be generating content on your blog that is relevant and timely. Many of these posts probably would easily translate to your social media site without significant editing. Some will require careful consideration before posting to Facebook or YouTube. Your content, whether it is entertaining or informative, communicates something about your business. You want to understand how the users of a particular social media site will interpret the content before you start slapping up everything that has your name on it. A strict product description may not be very appealing on Twitter, but could be very useful on LinkedIn or MantaConnect.
- Links – Even if content may not be appropriate for a particular social media site, you should create links that permit users to easily access it. If you create text links, you want to use keywords that are popular, intriguing or descriptive.
- Social media buttons – If you haven’t been introducing the social media buttons at the bottom of your blog posts and articles, you need to start doing so. These buttons help raise your profile on Facebook and Twitter and provide free promotion. You should provide these buttons from the most popular sites as well as ones you are well established on, but don’t go overboard. Too many buttons may slow your site down or inhibit responses. Also encourage partners to like your content; zero likes for a post makes your blog appear unpopular.
- Remove aged content – A key to remaining pertinent is providing content on a regular basis. You social media site should have some depth, but accumulating months of content that is no longer relevant is inhibiting the performance of your site. Periodically weed out content on these sites that is underperforming and replace it with fresher material. It may not produce any more business, but visitors will know that at least you are devoting some effort to maintaining the site.
The right content can help a business take off. If one of your videos goes viral you could be looking at an enormous amount of free publicity. That isn’t going to happen very often, but you should be producing material that has that goal in mind. In any case, producing relevant videos, images and information will keep your target consumers interested in your social media site and enthusiastic about your brand.
