Trumpeter Media uses affiliate marketing. An affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to this product and affiliated sites. Other affiliate links may be used in this article, but they do not impact on the price that you pay (in fact you get to use my discounts!) and they help me to get this information to you for free.
Many business owners are outsourcing or automating their social media to save time. We often think that it is better to have a constant newsfeed, bombarding people with information about our businesses. However, that may not be the case.
Today, I am speaking as an advocate of quality over quantity when it comes to social media. I have seen several clients and business owners coming to me recently with a long stream of tweets and Facebook posts in an attempt to get their businesses ‘out there’.
Why a High Quantity of Posts and Tweets is not always the best course of action
Sadly, this plan of action can often backfire. Nothing puts you off more than a clogged up newsfeed, with someone shouting ‘me, me, me!’ (a bit like a social media megaphone!) In fact, a business with what is classed as too many ill-written Facebook or Twitter posts can often get ‘unfollowed’ or ‘un-liked’.
It’s actually better to have fewer high quality posts and tweets rather than a stream of low quality posts or what I call ‘gap-fillers’.
Think about your audience and what they are looking for. Write content that will help them and encourage them to engage, not just content designed to sell to them or bombard them with your website. High quality posts contain carefully planned #hashtags and @mentions, often with high quality images or videos attached. Links should be helpful and useful information, sometimes from your own blog, but often from other peoples.
Defining your Social Media Brand Voice
Defining your online social media ‘brand voice’ will help to keep a high quality of content in your schedule. Your brand voice definition may contain your style, such as fun and quirky, or formal and intelligent. It may also specify the kind of language used (or not used!)
Planning your Social Media Schedule could pay off
It’s a great idea to plan your social media posts and tweets in advance. This way you can ensure a good content mix (no more than 20% should be promotional). Remember that people on social media are looking to be up to date with local news, online trends and hot topics. They want useful and shareable information, most of which can be planned a month in advance, with a few live-tweets or reactionary posts thrown in along the way.
Combine your Content Strategy with Social Media Listening
Remember to ‘listen’ to your audience rather than constantly ‘shout-out’ to them. Social media listening should be 50% of your time or resources. Find out more here.
If you enjoyed this article you might also like to read about 6 ways to maintain brand cohesion on social media and 5 New Tactics to Transform your Governments Social Media Strategy
2 thoughts on “Quality over Quantity on Social Media”