August 7, 2012

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Does your small business have a social media content strategy? If not, no worries. Start from here and checkout several lessons we’ve learned while growing our social media following at YFS Magazine.

1. Post social media content consistently.

Once you’ve launched your company, develop a consistent stream of content on your social networks. Most social media experts will contend – the more the better. But start with a consistent weekly frequency and maintain it. If you have limited staffing bandwidth start by using an RSS aggregator app to automatically publish your company’s blog content to your social networks.

2. Schedule social content in advance.

Utilize social media dashboards such as HootSuite Publisher, Buffer, TweetDeck and Crowdbooster to schedule your social media posts in advance. This enables your social media coordinator or manager (or you) to spend more time optimizing, tracking results and responding to followers during the course of a week instead of executing.

3. Use graphics in social media posts.

We’ve found that the use of graphics bring about a huge spike in engagement with our fans. Share things that your fans actually want to share too. Graphics are simple enough to relate to and share across your audience base. Create your own in-house graphics that resonate with your brand and marketing messages and spread the word.

4. Keep social content short, concise and simple.

Make it easy for your fans to respond or share their opinions on your social networks. Don’t ask long-form questions, stick to thought-provoking comments and questions that can initiate a simple response. For example, “Do you think that small business owners can learn from high performance athletes?” This can evoke a “Yes” or “No” response and possible elaboration by fans who have strong viewpoints on a subject.

5. Spark social debate and conversations.

Enable your social media followers to share their perspectives and opinions on industry related happenings – whether you agree or not. Set the rules of engagement up-front (i.e. refrain from personal attacks, foul language, harassment, etc.) and monitor the conversations.

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