It’s impossible for us to wrap our minds around the amount of information created on a daily basis. For example: there are enough tweets written in a single day to fill a 10-million page book – or, 8,163 copies of War and Peace. But how can we even begin to grasp the scale of those figures? It’s truly mindboggling!
By all standards, our culture is subject to some serious information overload. A new infographic from Delvv, an innovative mobile/search startup platform, keys in on the sheer volume of overload – and its affect on our psyche. A few fun facts from the infographic…
Your “Social Media Strategy” Is Wearing ‘em Out!
- Americans spend 60 hours/week consuming content.
- The average social network user receives 285 pieces of content per day!
- That’s 54,000 words and 443 minutes of video.
- 16 minutes of every hour is spent on social networking sites.
- 82% of the world’s online population is reached by social networking sites. That’s 1.2 billion people.
So, what’s a social/content-oriented business to do? Scroll past the infographic to learn about some of the ways your social media strategy can remain prominent and effective despite the ill effects of Information Fatigue Syndrome (IFS).
Social Media for Business: 3 Ways to Be Heard & Be Relevant
#1 Get Specific. Generic content is terrible. It makes you look boring, lazy, and cheap: three things that nobody finds attractive in a person or company. Find a niche and run with it. If you sell a food item, educate customers about the quality or nutritional properties of your ingredients. If you make leather bags, make a video about the handcrafted subculture in your city or region. If you provide a delivery service, publish a well-designed map that someone might want to print out and put up in their office or local coffee shop. The point is to push past the generic. Do something specific, something special!
#2 Don’t Rehash. Create your own content; don’t just leach off of other people who are willing to work harder than you. I’m not saying don’t share other people’s content. You should! When you come across something great that will appeal to your audience, by all means pass it along. But do so with panache! Make it your own. Offer some extra insight. Give a meaningful summary. Don’t just copy and paste someone else’s work!
#3 More Quality, Less Quantity. Lastly, a social media strategy for your business might not need 5-6 posts a week on Facebook. Depending on your industry and your target demographics, you might find better engagement and conversion rates by posting just 2-3 times a week. Whether posting a lot or a little, your primary focus shouldn’t be on quantity, but on quality. Try this:
- Determine how many hours you can allocate a week to doing social media for business.
- Make this commitment: I will not publish anything that I would not be excited to see in my own News Feed.
- Then, create however much content you can during the time you have allocated. If that’s 9 posts, great. If it’s only 3, that’s okay, too. The important thing is that you have created quality content – not garbage that’s going to contribute to more Information Fatigue Syndrome!
How does your brand go about the content creation process? What do you do to ensure you’re only publishing quality content?