In the world of content, it’s hard to know what’s too much and what’s not enough without testing it out. Marketers are famous for wanting to test before implementing but it’s always good to have a few benchmarks in place before you run with a program. When chatting with folks about their content marketing programs, I often get asked “how often is too often?” and to be honest, it depends on your program and your content. Below are a few guidelines that will help you make an informed decision on how often to post content for your business.
Test and Learn: Find the right combination for your business
Like the majority of marketing initiatives, finding the right mix of subject and frequency involves testing. A great way to start out would be to send industry-curated content to your audience on a daily basis, reaching out to them with a few relevant news items and links to related articles. An additional, weekly email could focus on original content about your industry that you’re publishing (along with curated content highlights). When distributing content on a monthly basis, deliver your company news, along with a round-up of the most popular content you have created throughout the previous month. You could include both curated and original content in that newsletter. In our latest ebook, The Content Curation Look Book, we highlight a number of companies who have successfully implemented curated content into their marketing strategy, including newsletters.
Frequently: Social Media
You audience can pop in and out of your social channels all day long, there may be some trends you spot depending on some of your key influencers are online but that’s probably it. The beauty to social media is that it is a consistent flow of information. Twitter, for example, is an ongoing conversation. At any time of day folks are on there tweeting and sharing. You want to ensure that your content shows up in your prospects’ content streams when they log on. Using publishing software like TweetDeck, Hootsuite or Buffer will help you get organized and schedule your tweets throughout the day or week.
The schedule is important but the content behind the tweet or post is also important as well. When planning your tweets, a good rule of thumb is to have about 10 percent focused on your brands marketing message. Tweeting about your brand with news about your organization is a no-brainer, but why not share a tidbit from a thought leader in your industry? Did you read a great article in the news the other day that talked about your industry? Reported by Convince and Convert Blog, posts that link to third-party sites on average generate 33 percent more clicks than posts linking to owned sites. As with any type of content sharing or curated content, remember attribution can be your best friend. Popping in an @ with the authors handle is a nice shout-out and can get you a retweet a time or two as well.
Weekly (at least): Blog Posts
When planning your original creation needs, keep in mind the following statistics, on average, 87 percent of curated content is from third-party sources, while 13 percent is original content. This data is based on over 1million articles we reviewed in the 2012 Curation Habits (report we published earlier this year).
Knowing good blog content takes time and energy to create, think about re-purposing content you already have. Is there a webinar you conducted a few months ago? Revisit the presentation and pull a few key points to write up and share with the reading audience. Alerting your audience to your new content is the best way to build your readership. After you’ve met your goals for readership and visitors, then you can dedicate more time to posting more frequently.
Ask Your Audience: Email Newsletters
We forget sometimes that the answers can be right under our noses, your own customers and reading audience. Reaching out and asking when they prefer to get their information can get two steps ahead. A great way to gather this information simply and easily is to send your subscribers a quick survey via email, asking them what information they are looking for, and how often they would prefer to hear from you.
To find fresh, relevant content, sign-up for a demo of Curata and learn how curated content can help feed that content need.