With its huge following, Facebook continues to be the primary platform for many successful strategic marketing campaigns. When used effectively, the social media site can greatly help any business build a following and attract significant attention. Content marketing plays a critical part in this success.
There are several specific and general rules that content marketing must follow. Most importantly, social media is designed to be social. Many people try too hard to sell their product or service and in the process quickly turn people off, paying the high price of lost potential business. Conversely, other people are so afraid of antagonizing their network with their postings that they very rarely post effective marketing content. This latter situation is a particularly common problem on Facebook.
People are looking to be entertained. It”™s a key component of webinars, presentations and social media. When people present a webinar, one reason why they vary their tonality and emphasize their enthusiasm is to relay this impression to their audience. This is one of the major differences between presenting online and in person.
If your content is too technical, people will not read it. They don”™t want to know the details, just the gist of your post. That”™s one of the primary reasons why the title of your post is so important. It can generate enormous interest if it is truly exciting or useful. Even if a small subset of your audience is interested in the technical aspect, you are much better off referring them to a technical article on your blog or website than attempting to post it on Facebook.
I consider 2012 to be the year of content management as its power has permeated throughout the social media world. Both the quality and quantity of posts can greatly affect the success (or failure) of branding, sales and strategic marketing campaigns.
Since people are increasingly seeking information online that they find useful or entertaining, it”™s particularly relevant. Unfortunately, they are also exhibiting a marked decrease in patience and only occasionally closely read past the title and first few paragraphs of an article. Many astute writers are therefore putting their most important information towards the top of the article or highlighting its presence.
The requirement to include pictures on many platforms is also becoming increasingly commonplace. Technorati, a highly popular blogosphere website, will not accept any article without an image. Facebook”™s edgerank (which determines what goes in your newsfeed) is quite sensitive to the posting of images and videos, which in turn elicit likes and comments.
According to a recent study by Simply Measured, “Videos are shared 1,200 percent more than links and text posts combined and photos are liked 200 percent more than text updates.” More traffic is now referred from Pinterest than LinkedIn, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Google+ combined.
My prediction is that by 2014, the majority of social media content will be visual. That”™s not to say that there won”™t continue to be a voluminous amount of text that will be published, but the real emphasis and most effective traffic will be visual. There will also be many relatively new sites like Instagram and Pinterest along with an increasing number of 30- and 15-second video sites like Shoutz.
In July, Instagram reported that it had 80 million users. It is now one of the fastest-growing online networks and 40 of the top 100 brands are currently using its service. This is why Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion earlier this year and why Facebook stock will likely be a good short-to-long-term investment, particularly given its currently depressed price.
Promoting your brand or fan page on Facebook can easily be aided by what you post on your wall. While your friends and subscribers won”™t be appreciative if you constantly try to drive them to your blog or fan page, an occasional posting for some relevant and business-related article or content (say one in nine postings depending on your frequency of posting) is a reasonable number.
It also helps if you post at the same time every day and create and adhere to an editorial calendar. If the title or image of your post is appealing, your audience might just follow the link or share it with their social network.
One final aspect concerning content marketing is the need to constantly monitor the reaction and response from your audience. It is usually fairly obvious to see what elicits a response and what is ignored. By adjusting your postings accordingly, you can significantly increase their reach and effectiveness.
The biggest downside is the amount of time content management requires. Like most of social media, there is a sizeable time commitment. Some social media companies like mine will “ghost” articles and postings in your name and significantly improve your time management.
Bruce Newman is the president of wwWebevents.com, a division of The Productivity Institute L.L.C. in Carmel. He is a social media guru and a specialist on webinar creation and promotion. He can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.
