Getting people to visit your social media pages and interacting with your organization is the goal of being part of the social media world. But it is not a ‘build it and they will come’ type of world. People expect content, content and more content that is valuable to them for information and/or entertainment. But creating that content yourself is not the answer. In fact, sites that do nothing but create their own content are not the ‘winners’ of the social media world.
The true way to create a buzz about your social media pages is to follow a simple rule of how much your share, how much you post and how much you ‘sell’.
Share
This is where the rea
l ‘social’ part of social media is king. Sharing other people’s content is the way to attract people to your pages.
This can go against the natural instinct to be the sole creator of content, but fight the urge and share, share and share. The trick here is to share things that are in line with your organization’s message, strengthen your position as an authority and don’t compromise your reputation. You can find this content by subscribing to major media outlets or social media leaders in your field and share (and reshare) posts that they are sharing. It may seem strange to keep the buzz of other sites going, but what you do is collect people along the way. This should make up around 60% of everything you post.
Post
Posting your own content is a way to add to the social media world. Writing original, insightful and powerful material is a way to be known and have your material shared. Writing materials with no authority, no real entertainment or informational benefit is not going to help you. Write with passion, about stuff you know – that is the key. Don’t plagiarize other sites or dress up others people’s content in your own sites wrapper. Also don’t spread your content over multiple pages if it easily sits on one. The click-bait phenomena of having to click page after page to get content is a quick way to lose your audience. This should make up around 30% of everything you post.
Sell
Posting about goods or services that you offer for sale (or even for free, but require a commitment, such as getting email addresses) is most probably the main reason most people are online in the social world. But these ‘sells’ need to be just 10% of what you post. Over selling on social media will turn people away – what they want is content, and lots of it, from someone with authority – whether your share it or write it yourself – and from that they will buy from your 10% sales pitches.