How to Participate in Social Media

By Sandra Collins

This blog is about social media.

 

In prior posts I wrote about using social media for your small business and how to get started choosing platforms you can use. Here I’ll provide some advice for what kinds of content you can post.

There are a lot of options, but definitely you want the content that you post to be useful and informative to your readers. Remember that your social media posts are contributing to helping prospects to know you, like you, and trust you. Even if prospects aren’t going to buy from you directly, they may pass your information onto others who will.

That being said, I know it can seem like if you share your hard-earned knowledge for free, you’re compromising a prospect’s need to actually buy your products or services. So, yes, you can certainly choose to not reveal your expertise via free media; however, your objective is still to be helpful to draw people in and encourage them to share your insights with others, as well as to demonstrate your unique value in your areas of expertise. It can be a fine line and, ultimately, it’s your decision to make.

A rule of thumb: Don’t post things in bad taste or things that would alienate part of your audience; use good judgment. Arguably, a portion of people on social media seem easy to anger or offend, so carefully consider the risks of what you post.

So let’s talk about some ideas for social media content. In this post we’ll talk about subject matter. In the big picture, subject matter can be divided into several types:

Information / How-to

  • You can share short or long content that delivers information related to your business or that your followers would find helpful. For example, you can include foundational information that people researching products or services in your area of expertise would want to know as part of their buying process.
  • You can post information on how to do simple things that your prospects may want to do themselves.
  • It’s fine to post fun information occasionally, as long as you use good judgment.
  • Think about the things you find interesting, or that you could picture your prospects being confused or concerned about.
  • Speak to your clients about what interests them and what they’d like you to write about, or what would have been helpful to know when they were looking around for suppliers.
  • Ask your employees what questions they get – particularly pre-sales, after-sales support questions, and topics that come up related to your customer service.
  • Get ideas for topics from information you hear about or read about in your industry.

Stories

  • Stories include any background or descriptions you share. They also include personal stories and community-related stories. Their purpose is to help prospects and customers to know you better and relate to you better.
  • Examples of stories would include: how you got into business; something interesting you heard; something that happened that week and why you’d like to tell your audience about it or why you think it’s important; a description of how you helped a customer (helpful information, not boasting); how one of your customers successfully used one of your products; creative ideas for how customers can use a product; what happened when you did a particular thing related to your business; a story about an event you attended; a cause or charity your business supports, with a story about a particular event with which you helped; a story about something that happened to you and what you learned from it.
  • If sharing stories involving customers, don’t use their full names unless you obtain explicit permission. Of course, don’t use confidential information.

Opinions

  • You can share opinions on matters related to your business.
  • It’s frowned upon to speak negatively of your competitors. Actually, avoid negative talk in general because it will compromise your image.
  • If your business involves customers expecting you to have expertise in a body of knowledge, posting your opinions can help them to see how you approach matters.
  • If there’s controversy about aspects of your industry, or if different people in your industry do things in opposing manners, include descriptions of the benefits of why you do things the way you do.
  • If there is a “comments” section for your post, ask your readers for their opinions or experiences (if appropriate).

Curated

  • Curated content is content you obtain from somewhere else and share.
  • It’s very important to ask the creator of the content for permission to use it if you are going to share more than a few sentences word for word, or if you’re going to summarize their content at length.
  • Always give credit where credit is due. Be sure you spell any associated names correctly.
  • If the information is located online, link to it in your post.
  • You can combine descriptions of your opinions on a subject with sharing curated content. For example, you may write, “I read this article by John Doe in which he states [such-and-such].” Be sure to link to the information online. “I agree with that [for these reasons] and I’d like to offer an additional comment…”

Promotional

  • Promotional content informs your audience about things such as sales promotions, new products, or upcoming events. Often they’ll be associated with a particular timeframe.
  • Your first post should announce the content and after that you can post short, quick reminders such as, “Don’t forget, this month’s special offer ends on Friday!” and remind people of the details or link to that information online. Try to word each reminder differently; don’t just repeat the same thing each time or it can get irritating. Avoid doing a lot of reminders on LinkedIn.

In all cases, you can post links from your posts to longer-form online pages such as articles, blogs, web pages, landing pages, your other social media accounts, or to your prior posts. Over time, connecting your social media posts when you can helps people view more of your content and gives you a solid online presence. If you’re able to point to pages on your website (such as your blog), people can visit other pages on the site if they wish.

The types of subject matter I’ve described can be used on any of the social media platforms that you choose to use, keeping in mind that each platform holds its own user expectations for what content is shared. More on that in the next post.

P.S. Your posts do not have to be long, but if they are interesting you’ll get much better readership.

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