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Informative or annoying? Walking the fine line of Social Media postings

Sep 20, 2016

sheree

Informative or annoying? Walking the fine line of Social Media postings

A recent study showed that a large portion of brands don’t have dedicated, full-time social media managers, but run their profiles in 10 hours or less per week. Given that social media is likely to be combined with a range of other job responsibilities, having a strategy and plan for social media will help give you enough time to get important things done, and also avoid the mistake of delivering poor engagement.

One of the keys to managing social media well is to not sign up for every social media channel available just because they are new or the “popular kid on the block”. Choose the right few channels for you, don’t over commit your resources and remember, once you start social media, you need to maintain your company presence to have any impact.

Amongst their 29 rules for social media, Buffer Social have included the top five general rules around posting to social media networks which applies across the board to all networks.

Share several times a day, but space out your posts . Burst posting (where you constantly post across a period of time) is shown to be one of top reasons for people unfollowing a brand.
Respond to all comments as quickly as you can. A social media study found that 53 percent of users who tweet at a brand expect a response in under 60 minutes. Twitter is the most real-time of the social networks. Timely responses are imperative on Twitter and highly encouraged everywhere else
The art of the hashtag . Hashtags are great for added engagement and visibility, almost all the time. The ideal number of hashtags seems to vary greatly. Feel free to test and iterate for yourself.
Remember the 80/20 rule. Entertain and inform your audience first , sell to them second while ensuring content is still relevant and engaging.
Always use first person plural

Informative versus annoying is a fine balance that social media community managers strive to achieve given that they are trying to engage with an audience but not harass them to the point of negativity. We want to provide value, but we don’t want to go overboard. Where’s the fine line? And exactly how fine is it? This may be different for each channel.

How often to post on Facebook

Social Bakers studied three months’ worth of Facebook content from major brands and as a general rule found that posting once per week on Facebook was so low as to lose connection with your audience and posting more than twice per day was crossing the line into annoying.

How often to post to Twitter?
If you tweet too much there is a higher chance that the engagement with your followers will decrease, while the same thing happens when you don't tweet on a daily basis.
Studies have shown that after the third tweet your followers lose their interest in the content that you are sharing.

How often to post to LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a little different to the above social media players in that it is directly aimed at the business community. Posts on LinkedIn need to be longer form and more informative and hence the recommended number of posts is once per day.

How often to post to Google +
While many see this social network as one of the weaker networks, it’s important because it’s a Google property and therefore can help your business be found on Google more often. Post all your content to Google + as part of an effective SEO strategy.

Now you’ve answered the why, how, what and when of social media and can move on to your next challenge – providing valuable and engaging CONTENT.