Breathe Fresh Air Into Your Social Media Content

There’s a Method to Twitter’s Madness.

If you are a member of the digital marketing world, you have almost certainly heard about Twitter’s updates to its content and automation policies that occurred earlier this year. Twitter is taking measures to curb unwanted content and spam accounts, and one way it is accomplishing this is through banning duplicate posts. If your SMM plan depends on duplication, you may be wondering not only how you are going to adapt, but also why it is so important to do away with this type of strategy all of a sudden. I am about to answer that question.

Any Content is Better Than None, Right? Wrong.

It seems that there is a prevailing myth among many digital marketers that any content is better than no content when it comes to social media strategy. On the surface, this logic makes sense. After all, doesn’t a bustling social media profile with repetitive postings look better than a completely empty one? The answer is complicated. While some may argue that this looks better than a blank page at face value, social media users who actually follow such pages will catch on quite quickly to this oversimplified approach.

A thoughtful article from Adweek points out that two of the most important things a company can do on social to build trust from its audience is to create honest content and to engage its audience. I don’t think it requires much explanation from me as to why churning out duplicate content, even if it is “strategically” spread out, does not meet these goals (nor is it a good way to build your SEO strategy). Users aren’t going to be engaged by boring old concepts, and seeing the same post over and over again makes an organization look desperate and spammy, not honest. If you truly want to have an impact on your audience and build your following, thus increasing your ROI in some form, your business’s content needs to feel conversational, natural, and communicative, even if you are in a more rigid industry. Repeating cookie-cutter automated copy will not help you in this matter.

But Crafting New Content is Hard!

This is true – especially in an agency setting or in situations where a business has multiple pages to run. However, just because this work is time-consuming or hard doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do for both your audience and your business goals. You would be better off not having any social accounts whatsoever then damaging your company’s reputation through lazy or overly-robotic posts. Hire a new writer or two. Find a way to better utilize automation tools to make the creation and curation processes easier. Maybe even consider downsizing your overall social marketing strategy so less content is needed to keep your reputation positive. Whatever you need to do to improve your strategy, do it, or else risk having your page flagged and your public appearance tainted.

This article originally appeared on LinkedIn Pulse.