Just Starting to Engage and Share? Follow your NOOK!

Sharing content on social media pages isn’t as easy as posting several links or images a day. If it was that simple, then every business owner would be able to increase their fan base just by making repeat posts on Facebook or Twitter. Consumers and fans alike are willing to look at content, but they are not foolish enough that they won’t notice when a business is blatantly trying to get them to buy something.

Keep your audience engaged and interested by staying focused on what makes you unique to them. Think of it as your nook or expertise and reinforce through articles and blogs what differentiates you and your businesses in your market industry.  Don’t stray. There are several things to remember when undertaking a content marketing campaign.  Stay focused on your niche and ask yourself if what you are sharing follows this easy N-O-O-K rule.

N – Make sure content is NON-PROMOTIONAL

When using content marketing as a driver of new business it is important to establish trust and the idea that a company is thought leader. Both of these are important in establishing a solid fan base. Putting blatantly promotional content on a social media page is not going to earn either of these two things. The content should always be creative, with a balance of syndicated and original.  Never obviously try to sell a product. Just because the content isn’t promotional, doesn’t mean it should be completely off topic. It should be relevant to the company and the reader. These are the posts that fans will ‘retweet’ or ‘share’, and depending on how many friends they have on their lists a piece of content may be seen by thousands of people just by one fan reposting.

O – OFFER something to your fans

Sharing content via social media is going to gain more fans due simply to the fact that at least one person is likely to repost or retweet the update. This doesn’t mean that business owners can’t give their fans an additional bump. Fans love giveaways and prizes; offering these things as rewards for reposting a status is a quick way to garner more fans while not spending too much money. If only ten people share the content off of a business’s social media page, and each of these ten people have 190 friends (the average friend count people on Facebook have) then 1900 additional people were given the ability to view the content and see exactly the business page that it came from. What’s even better is that at this point the fans gained from following their friend’s repost may also share the post for a chance at free prizes.

O – OPTIMIZE for your fan base

Every company wants to get their message out to their fans that will allow their fans to get their message out to others, but there is such a thing as overdoing it. If too many status updates or tweets from a specific company pop up on someone’s social media page they may feel as if the company is doing nothing more than spamming. This is the quickest way to lead fans to stop following a page.

An optimum amount of daily Facebook updates is often to be reported as about three, but it does depend on your industry and audience. Going much over three can start to crowd up a person’s newsfeed or just annoy them that they’ve seen so much from one business in a day. These updates should also be spaced throughout the day. These should also be spaced out so as to not let a person see back-to-back updates. The same content can also be shared throughout these tweets or updates, but business owners should make sure to vary the title of the post slightly.

Likewise… Not posting enough updates is just as bad as posting too many updates. Letting customers forget a company exists is a terrible way to gain and keep clientele. Some experts say that a company should at least create an update once every other day, but this is nowhere near enough for an effective social media or content marketing campaign. Everyone in the world, or even in a city, isn’t on Facebook and Twitter at the same time. This means that an update can be seen by ten out of a hundred fans that just happen to be on at that time. If another post isn’t made during the day, then the fans that weren’t lucky enough to be on during the initial post may never see it. Many social media users don’t take the time to scroll back through all of the updates they missed, so maintaining a good balance of not too many updates but enough to reach everyone should be maintained.

K – KNOW your audience

The content a company uses should be focused towards their specific clientele. If a company sells a clothing line for preteen girls then it is likely not a good idea to post a white paper as content. Any decent business professional knows that they need to know their audience and that audience’s demands. Most people like short concise content, especially if they have to read it. Most people in the Internet age also take kindly to videos. Regardless of what mainstream audiences like, however, content should be solely focused on a company’s niche audience.

Social media marketing is a new frontier that more and more people are realizing is going to have a huge effect on the way businesses work from now on.  There’s no time like the present for you to start.  Keep it simple with a keen focus on your nook… and you will begin impacting your success, today!