Social media has developed to the point that it is now more than putting a message out online and hoping for the best. Because the users are smarter and have made social media a part of their lives, it is up to companies to make the most out of every post and update they publish.

Social media management is a constant and ongoing process due to the nature of the instant, online world in which social networks live. When it comes to developing a content strategy for social media channels, it often works best for passionate, dedicated people to collaborate across departments, rather than handing the task off to the marketing department. By getting input from a variety of sectors within a company, a social media content strategy can really succeed.

Brainstorming

Using employees in different departments can be a great benefit to your company’s social media strategy.

For instance, the project development coordinator will have the best information on new products, which can be translated into photos and discussion questions via sites like Instagram, Vine, and Facebook. The human resources recruiter will know about job openings, and the marketing content writer can give some great copy that ties in to current company branding campaigns or seasonal promotions.

Brainstorming sessions that include engaged employees in a variety of different areas can help begin to craft the subject matter and types of content that are going to be shared via social media.

Go With What Works

Besides getting a good overall view of what the company can share via social networks, it’s also important to go with what works, which means sharing the type of content that gets the highest engagement.

It has been shown that photos and videos can draw more engagement than text-only updates, so this needs to be taken into consideration. Using a photo linkbait website like Quotes Cover can make it easy to share text through a visual format.

For instance, this quote would go over great on a music artist’s Pinterest account or a streaming music service’s Facebook page. In addition, capturing a video of the company’s CEO giving his most recent talk at a conference will most likely be more popular than sharing a written recap of the speech.

Users also appreciate variety. Share links and give written updates, but also share videos, interact with user posts, and post photos and graphics regularly. A social media account with variety goes a long way.

For social accounts that focus on one medium, like Vine or Instagram, it’s just important to vary the type of content that is being shown. An employee lunch one day and showcasing a new product the next can give variety while using the same medium.

Choose How To Share

Once the content itself has been ironed out, it’s time to create a social media publishing calendar. Cloud-sourced documents are a great way to keep everyone instantly up-to-date on the social media content strategy for the week or month. There are a variety of tools available, including Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Evernote.

Some social media publishing platforms also allow multiple users to access the same company account, so it’s easy for many users to simultaneously view upcoming posts and account data. The team should experiment to see what works best for them.

Besides creating a calendar, keep a running Google Doc or online file (on a site like WorkFlowy or Evernote) with ideas for future social media content posts like quotes, links, videos, and more. This helps with writer’s block and provides inspiration.

Utilize Metrics & Reporting

Social media content teams should take advantage of data and metrics to better optimize what they are posting. Facebook provides Link shorteners that can provide click and sharing metrics, while Google Analytics’ social media reports (located under Traffic Sources) can give goal-oriented data to see how many social media referrals completed conversions and the most popular content that was accessed. These reports should be reviewed on a recurring basis.

Yes, social media content strategy is more than posting content online and hoping for the best. By implementing a clear, concise strategy, companies will find better engagement and brand recognition than others who don’t have a plan in place.

Photo credit: caribb via photopin creative commons

My dad was proud of his new “Internet-smart” TV and wanted to show it off to me on St. Patrick’s Day weekend last month. He showed me how he could log onto Facebook and view photos, update his status, etc.

As he was showing me, all I could think was, “Would anyone really use this?” Judging by the time it took him to navigate to my profile, I concluded that surfing social media sites through a TV isn’t ideal. But, he was excited because he could log into Facebook from his TV — not because he necessarily wanted to.

This got me thinking: does social media need to be everywhere? Perhaps there should be some parameters for integrating social media into products and services.

Just like with social media account creation, companies are adding social media integration to everything just because. Social media should only be implemented when it is part of a well-thought-out plan that ties into what a user is already doing (e.g., maybe my dad would like it if he could share that he’s currently watching The Mentalist on Facebook so he and his friends could talk about it). Without this desire or call-to-action, social media integration is not only useless, but potentially overwhelming to users.

Social Media Has To Be Easy

Typing from your remote is tedious, much like T9 texting from an old-fashioned cell phone. To implement social media or another type of available communication service, technology needs to make it as easy as possible. Maybe my dad’s new TV should have come with a keyboard and mouse. Or, it could have had voice recognition to automatically create status updates or tweets.

Today’s connected generation has a fleeting attention span, and making things as easy as possible will guarantee regular use.

Social Media Has To Be On Their Terms

Nobody likes to be forced to connect their social media accounts with a service, or to only be eligible for an exclusive discount or page access if they tweet about a company on Twitter.

The sole purpose of social media is for users to share what they are doing and what they care about most, and it will backfire if a company believes in forcing users to add or use their social media accounts in order to complete an action.

Social Media Has To Serve A Purpose

The question, “Why does a TV need to tweet?” really has no useful answer; so, the way the TV, Internet and social media profiles work together needs to change. Maybe a user can participate in unique Twitter chats about shows they are watching. Or, they can tweet from their TV for exclusive giveaways. Maybe the TV could update a user’s Twitter account every time they watch an entire TV program. Did the user share on Facebook that they like The Walking Dead? The TV can auto-record the show or remind them when it’s about to come on.

The possibilities for uniting television and social media are endless; but, it will only work if a user feels that it adds to their experience and ability to connect with their social network.

GetGlue is a good example of an app that connects incentives, social media and television. What if my dad’s TV could automatically check him into every show he watched, or let him know when there was an exclusive GetGlue chat about one of the shows he checks into regularly?

Screenshot from: http://getglue.com/guide

Social Media Has To Be Collaborative, Not Promotional

No matter the technology or the methods of implementing a user’s social media profile, companies should never try to promote its products and usage without user consent. Instead, companies should focus on offering the best platform possible in order give users a way to share what they want to share, instead of being backed into a corner by gadgets asking them to tweet where they are or what they are doing next.

Social media users have gotten smarter when it comes to sharing; many are no longer posting Facebook statuses about what they ate and are instead using social networks to share their passions, ideas, and content they love.

Social Media Content Value For Brands

The value of content for brands has been slow and time-coming, but businesses are beginning to realize it’s not the fact that you are on social media that counts; it’s what you are publishing. The old-time image of a CEO coming out of his office and proclaiming, “Well, we better get on Twitter,” is transforming into “We now have hundreds of thousands of followers, let’s start showing them some great content.”

Social networks like Pinterest have made it relatively easy to share content in an attractive way through images.

Because technology is making it possible to access the entire Internet anywhere a person goes, thanks to rampant wifi and cell-tower access, users are actually getting better at and more accustomed to consuming a large amount of content on a consistent basis. Most people are no longer interested in just following their high school classmates on Twitter or Facebook. They now want to know what value there is in what they have to say.

It was nice to be able to know that your former 8th grade best friend just had her second child, but reading about 500 different former friends in your newsfeed is overwhelming. So, people are searching for something different. Hence, custom curated content targeted toward specific individuals and their interests has gained a lot of traction.

Content Curation Platforms

The folks over at Medium (who formally were involved with Blogger and Twitter) have the right idea. They wanted to leverage great content on a central platform that could get more exposure than blogs that aren’t as popular. Great content can exist in all corners of the Internet, and bringing it to the foreground via content-sharing and curation platforms makes it easier to find.

Content aggregators continue to help users “cut through the noise on social media,” as Storify and Scoop.it promise. They allow users to share their passions through filtering the best content about a certain topic. Users can choose to “scoop” the content Scoop.it has chosen, or s/he can scoop pages they’ve come across browsing along. Scoop.it is the evolution of sites like HubPages and Squidoo, as it doesn’t rely on users to generate their own content. Instead, it pulls great content that has already been created into a single space. Paper.li is also a good example of this.

However, collective platforms aren’t the only thing gaining popularity. Aggregated individual profiles, such as RebelMouse and Vizify, allow users to automatically aggregate their shared content across several online platforms into one page.

Graphic and visual layout of aggregated content is what is gaining the most traction in the online content space today.

Users want something that is easy to navigate, yet visually appealing enough to keep their interest. Because technology is always at their fingertips, making things as easy as possible (hence the automatic aggregation from the many of sites mentioned) is what readers are wanting.

Copyright Concerns

Pinterest came under fire last year for allowing copyrighted content to be pinned by users. Thus, came a new effort to make sure that content was attributed to its rightful creator. However, as long as individuals and businesses are getting the correct attribution, they should be excited about getting their content curated and should do everything they can to promote it.

Overall, curation leads to greater exposure, which can only lead to good things for the website, blog, company or individual it leads back to. When curating content, all efforts should be made to find the original poster or owner. Additionally, there is a greater possibility of this when the creators themselves are part of the curation community, sharing their own content as well as others’.

Participating in content curation can be fairly easy, if using one of the sites mentioned, especially when it comes to pulling content based on keywords or other social media profiles. However, this type of content curation is useless if online users aren’t contributing their own content once in a while. Well-written content will continue to thrive online as users become more accustomed to finding the best content they can, as easily as possible.

photo credit: Rosaura Ochoa via photopin cc

image from Stock.XCHNG

This month marks the nine year anniversary of when Facebook (then known as TheFacebook.com) was first conceived and created by Mark Zuckerberg.

Since then, Facebook has grown by leaps and bounds, currently supporting over one billion active users (as of December 2012) and over 618 million active daily users.

Facebook’s capabilities and layouts have undergone the most obvious changes over the last nine years, and the way that marketers have learned to connect with users has grown, as well.

For marketers, the next nine years bring a variety of opportunities to further connect with their online audience, including using video and making pages more interactive.

Custom Page Tabs

Custom tabs on Facebook pages aren’t a new thing, but the applications that support the way they are built and designed continue to grow. FBML (also known as Facebook Markup Language) can help programmers create custom tabs that can help users subscribe to a mailing list, get more information about a company, or even enter into a giveaway.

However, in the next nine years, it is easy to surmise that custom Facebook tabs will continue to get more fluid and diverse, offering users a custom browsing experience, right in Facebook.

As capabilities continue to expand, marketers can look forward to creating entire websites or online shopping experiences in Facebook Pages. As it stands now, this is an extremely difficult and almost impossible feat: to have an error-free, robust interactive tab that allows the user to stay within Facebook. Application developers will continue to make custom tabs a lot easier to use and build, making great design more accessible to more page owners.

Video And Voice

Facebook recently announced an update to its mobile application, which allows users to record and send videos directly from the Facebook application. While we can assume this is a response to the growth in applications like SnapChat, this could hold potential for marketers.

Just as Google+ has had some success in promoting the easy-to-use video hangouts, Facebook already has a massive existing user base that could begin holding their own video chats, right from Facebook.  This would be a great opportunity for companies to hold customer or blogger discussions in video chat, to teach about new products or gather user feedback. Users could also get together to discuss pop culture, such as movies and new TV shows, sponsored by the production companies and cable networks.

The new update also gave users the capacity to record and send voice memos to others. While we can be fairly certain that most users don’t want companies to send them audio recordings, it could be a way to receive feedback from users or hold contests.

The ability to record video and voice shows that Facebook believes the movement toward sharing and communicating through different types of media and content will only continue to grow.

Facebook-Exclusive Content

Video and voice content by users on Facebook also highlights a growing emphasis on creating unique content directly on the Facebook platform. This trend could continue to grow and flourish with written content as well.

Even though Facebook has done away with their old Notes feature, which was a blogging type platform, one could argue that online written content still has a strong and loyal presence with online users. Introducing an exclusive blogging platform for Facebook users that allows for more customization and better features (such as video or voice blogs, as well as the ability to gain revenue from advertisements) could be another possibility.

Marketers that wish to grow their readership and interaction on Facebook could have an exclusive blog for posting unique content that is different from their other blogging or social networking platforms. When it comes to marketing, many still believe that content is king. While this is always up for discussion, it can’t be disputed that more great content on more online platforms certainly can’t hurt a company or its brand.

Advertisements

Facebook advertising continues to develop, allowing for more options for marketers. Facebook Ads have always had great demographic targeting capabilities, but with the introduction of Facebook Open Graph, brands will have greater opportunities to further learn about users’ browsing habits and interests.

This can lead to better advertising that is highly targeted and more applicable to a greater number of ideal customers. Facebook has also partnered up with Bing for the development of Open Graph, so we can expect to see more innovation and avenues for learning more about the millions of daily active Facebook users.

Whether it is better Facebook Pages, implementing video, or great advertising, Facebook will have a lot more to offer marketers and users alike in the next nine years.

As the reigning king of social media behind a permanent culture change in our society and the way it communicates, Facebook forces marketers to look beyond traditional marketing strategies and continue to grow along with it.

Alt Tags For Icons

Alt tags for images are sometimes overlooked by website marketing managers, who are so focused on meta tags or the content of the site, that they forget the benefit other meta tags can bring.

Adding alt tags to all images on a website can increase the chances that the image gets indexed in Google Images, thus possibly leading to more traffic to your website where the image is hosted.

Social media icons are no different. Having an alt tag of “Follow [Company Name] on Twitter” can help include two important social media keywords: the social network name and the company name.

Add Social Media Accounts Everywhere!

Be sure to share your social media links wherever it’s appropriate. If your business is listed in local directories or even national sites like Google+, Facebook or Yelp, make sure you completely fill out any fields where social media account links are allowed.

Creating a Word document or Google Drive spreadsheet of all the public account URLs can help get this done quickly without much hassle. This also includes adding URLs of social media accounts on other social media profiles you may have. For instance, Pinterest has an available field for the user or company’s Twitter URL.

When it comes to your own website, list employees’ social media accounts on their bio pages, as well as on any sidebars or headers that have built-in social media integration. Be sure to include your company-wide accounts as appropriate, as well.

While this isn’t directly giving links to your own website, it is helping expand your company’s presence online, which may eventually help with search ranking, if it hasn’t already.

Additionally, research has shown that re-tweets and shares on social media may get a piece of content indexed faster. This further proves that social media needs to be an integral part of any company’s marketing strategy.

When it comes down to it, the more links a company has to its own content (whether that is on their website, blog, or social networking profiles), the  more exposure they are going to get online.

Google+ Listings And Authorship

Google and SEO consultants have reported that having a presence on Google+, Google Places, and Google Authorship (which is now all combined into the Google+ platform) can help local SEO, as well as the indexing and display of a website’s content in search engine results. Additionally, Google Authorship can help increase visibility of company content, especially if the author’s photo shows up in the search results.

Images directly in the search results, especially because there aren’t any others on the page (even in ads), instantly draw the user to that link, making them more likely to click on it.

Google has integrated business local listings and individuals who publish online content with Google+ to not only make their social network carry weight, but to also be able to tie in social activity with search, something that allows users to get a better overall view of the online behavior of similar users as well as those that are in their direct networks.

Be sure to use the Google Authorship tags on your website to bring it all back full circle, combining SEO with social media. Additionally, embed Follow or Like widgets for the popular social media networks and check these regularly (at least once a quarter) to make sure there aren’t any errors or API changes that require some editing.

Successful Social Media & SEO Strategy

Part of having a successfully combined social media and SEO online marketing strategy includes staying up to date with changes and keeping profiles and website content current. The relevancy of content and social media updates to current events or applicable searches from users will also help your company’s online presence continue to grow.

Simply posting the link and letting the link preview on Facebook do all the work isn’t always working anymore.

Social media users are getting smarter and know how to decipher and sift through the content that company pages have posted on Facebook. This is especially true with the introduction of promoted posts and sponsored stories on Facebook (the court case against sponsored stories was just settled in the beginning of December).

More than ever, users are more wary of links, not wanting to waste their time reading content that is heavy on the sales copy and light on anything worthwhile.

There is a way to publish your content via social media that can help you stand out and prove yourself as a resource. However, this doesn’t meant that it’s OK to use well-crafted words to trick users into clicking on your posted links. Social Media content — as well as the external content the links point to — needs to be consistent and dedicated toward providing a service to the target user who may be clicking on it.

Ask A Question

This might be the easiest way to shape your social media content strategy. Ask an engaging question that relates to the content, but is also easy enough that users can answer it without having to read the entire article (this isn’t a quiz from your most challengine college professor).

For instance, if a tech company posted a link to a “2012 Holiday Gift Guide for Geeks” in the social media post, they could ask users what geeky gift they want most this year. Or the company could ask users what they think should top the list as the geekiest gift of 2012. Make sure it is written in the company’s voice, but a little bit more casual.

“Regular” users on Facebook or other social media sites — that is, those that are there for social reasons, not marketing ones — are relaxing. They are using social media to pass the time. Therefore, most users are more receptive to casual or clever questions or content posted via social media.

Summarize Or Lift A Quote Or Excerpt

Including an important excerpt or really interesting (even controversial) quote in the same post as the link to the content can help entice users to interact by posting their opinions about the preview that has been posted. For serious articles, a quote or summary of the article’s key points could also be combined with a question such as, “This expert says that we will be out of domestic oil reserves by 2075. Do you agree?”

Quotes shared via social media should reflect the main points in the article. For instance, quoting a local storage owner as saying “We are open 9 to 7 for the holidays” will not be as engaging as featuring his comment about how the holidays are big business for his storage property.

Figure out which quote, excerpt or summary sentence will make the most users interested (either in a positive or negative way) and drive discussion. The post it with your link.

It’s OK To Post Your Competitors’ Content

I have had many clients that look at me like I’m crazy when I suggest re-tweeting a competitors’ tweet. As long as they haven’t tried to sabotage your business or there’s any kind of legal issue, how is re-tweeting or sharing a competitor’s content going to hurt your business?

This is especially the case on Twitter, because the stream moves so fast. If a rival design firm has a link to an external post about the top online illustrators of the year, why not share it, especially if it isn’t promoting their business?

Trying to protect your social media streams by only posting content that can directly influence your bottom line is only going to come back to haunt you. The online community is one that helps one another. Need proof? Check out The Oatmeal’s Tesla Museum fundraiser.

Let’s say a rival to The Oatmeal refused to link to the fundraiser, even though Tesla was one of his favorite scientists. How is that going to help his business? Or furthermore, hurt The Oatmeal in some way? When it comes to great content and initiatives that have no ulterior motive, all social media posters (including individual users and companies) should feel OK with sharing.

Use Other Media

Social media posts that include videos and photos have a higher engagement and click-through rate than pure text content or text with a link to more content. Besides the potential higher engagement and click-through rate, mixing up your content strategy by including different types of media can help give users more options to interact with your content.

If your company isn’t utilizing videos or images, it should be. For instance, if I wanted to create a tutorial on my website about creating a WordPress plugin from scratch, I could write a 1000+-word tutorial about it on my website.

But, I could also create a video tutorial that shows the designer going through the actual steps on the screen, with the user watching it happen. My lengthy written tutorial could instead be broken down into image slides of each step, with an option to view a more detailed version.

Publishing content in different media can help reach more of your target audience, as people learn and like to consume content in different ways.

No matter how your company shapes its content strategy, it is important to create a content strategy in the first place. Going into social media marketing without a plan, much like going into any type of marketing or advertising without a plan, is sure to result in more setbacks and less community engagement.

The person icon to the left indicates that it is an authorship result, and then Barry’s name is clickable, which takes users to his Google+ profile.

Google Authorship is fairly easy to set up; you must have a Google+ profile first, and then your byline on content must match your name on Google+. Ideally, Google wants you to have an email address with the same domain as where your content is published, but you can also use the rel=author tag to specify authors in the content and then edit your Google+ profile to mention that you are a contributor to the website.

Tying Your Content To Your Google+ Profile

In essence, Google Authorship is tying your content to your Google+ profile, making authorship a crucial thing to consider by SEOs, content marketers and social media marketers alike.

Because authorship is a fairly new concept, our sister site Search Engine Land and Conductor report that only about 9% of all top tech blogs are implementing Google Authorship (using ‘rel=author’ to link to Google+ profiles) into their bylines.

Blogs and websites need to make authorship more of a priority, as it has many benefits for SEO and content creators alike. Search results that display the author’s photo (like Barry’s example above) are more eye-catching to users and establish better credibility. Because of this, they are much more likely to be clicked on.

Building A Central Social Hub For Your Content

Additionally, linking to the author’s Google+ profile gives the author a central place to share more information about themselves, their company and where else they can be found online.

What’s more, Matt McGee wrote an article last month about another “hidden” benefit of Google Authorship, which proves that Google is giving preference to these types of search results: “Google has confirmed that there’s a hidden benefit to having authorship status: If a user returns to the search results after reading an author-tagged search result for a certain period of time, Google will add three additional links to similar articles from the same author below the originally clicked link.”

Because the user had interest in the first article, Google is assuming that they may have interest in reading more material by the same  author. This can only increase an author’s visibility and credibility as their results are given more preference after one of their articles has already been read.

Furthermore, Mike Arnesen of SEOmoz mentions the increased importance of putting a face to content by Google in his article about AuthorRank, which he believes is going to be another signal Google will use to rank content. Mike speculates that several categories could make a difference in a person’s AuthorRank, including what sites they are published on, how many Google+ circles they are in, their Google+ engagement level (e.g., if they have their entire profile filled out and update their status regularly), and even how many comments or +1s their pieces of content receive.

Social Media And Content Authorship Results

The level of information that is currently displayed via authorship results is enlightening, as well. When looking at an authorship result, users can click “more by Author Name” to view a list of articles Google has attributed to this person:

Note: I used a cleared-cookie, non-signed in browser for these screenshots, so my personal browsing history didn’t affect the results.

When the link is clicked, it takes users to a search result page of articles, with a bio box off to the left:

On this page, there are a few things of interest. First, the blue box with my name next to the search box at the top of the window. This appeared after I clicked “More by Kelsey Jones.”

It’s also interesting to note that further down the page, Google also displays some of my Google+ status updates, as well as parts of my profile, such as the about section. I went through the six pages of results that were generated, and all results were, indeed, written by me, so this is a good sign that at least I (and the websites I am a contributor to) are using the rel=author tag correctly.

Google+ Authorship Hurdles

While my search results seemed correct, this doesn’t mean that implementing Google Authorship in a bigger capacity won’t come without errors and speed bumps. Of course, there will be some hiccups in the road; AJ Kohn just posted an  in-depth article about Authorship Bounce and how some pieces of content that appear in search results aren’t attributed to the correct authors (which may be due to not using the rel=author tag or using it incorrectly).

No matter the issues that may come with this new development, getting ahead of the curve and setting up Google Authorship now as an individual (and for all online content producers in your company, if applicable) is going to be crucial, especially if AuthorRank become the next biggest update to affect website traffic and how content is found online via search.

There is a right way and a wrong way to work with online users to generate content about a business in exchange for cash. For instance, working with well-trafficked bloggers on a paid review campaign that lets them give their honest feedback is a great way to generate buzz in the blogging community — and it doesn’t come across as spammy or as trying to control users’ online voices.

However, paying a “social media agency” for online reviews, without knowing the people who are posting them or what they are going to say, can certainly blow up in a company’s face. A social media agency that claims to get reviews “from real people” and sells multiple reviews for a low price are most likely using fake accounts and leaving reviews that are generic, full of grammatical errors, and offer no genuine and helpful feedback for a company and other users.

The Downfall Of Mass Reviews

It is much better for a company to take a chance that a high-quality, compensated user may leave a negative review rather than paying for fake positive reviews. This is even more the case when a company buys multiple “reviews” from one person at a time, on a site like Fiverr.com or Yelp:

Avoid Paying For Reviews From Users Like This.

Social media sites (as well as the users themselves) can usually tell when reviews are fake and they respond appropriately (which can be disaster for a company). People don’t like it when online content (especially that which is posted on social media and review sites) isn’t real. They are trusting that reviews online are genuine because they are choosing to base their vacation, next meal, event, or product purchase on what others are saying online.

Lifehacker recently had an article about how to spot fake reviews. For instance, fake reviews usually mention the business name and use “I” or “me” a lot more often than genuine reviews.

The obvious point of social media is that all opinions are authentic and belong to real people, so fake profiles that write fake reviews jeopardize that. The continuing trend of paying for fake reviews not only brings down the quality of the content online but the also the quality of users, as more fake or mass profiles are created to keep up with the demand.

Paid Review And Content Trends Will Continue To Rise

While compensated reviews and social media content will always be present, once companies understand the true complications of mass fake reviews, it may be possible to work toward compensating users for content that is genuine.

The power is certainly in the hands of bloggers, social media users, and other online content creators. Companies must strive to produce real connections and relationships with these users instead of trying to falsely represent a good reputation. Trying to be sneaky online almost always leads to disaster.

Original illustration from sxc.hu user nkzs

Just like with anything else, customers can feel inundated and overwhelmed by company tweets and status updates. According to a survey published in September 2011, 36% of all unlikes on Facebook are because a company was posting too much. This means that a user is irritated enough to go over to settings on the actual Facebook page and complete the actions to unlike the page.

Likewise, on Twitter, users may unfollow others for tweeting too much (thus clogging up their newsfeed) or making their tweets (and, likewise, Facebook or other social media posts) too self-centered.

It is important to stay top-of-mind by keeping a constant presence on social media, but doing it too often (or not posting the right mixture of promotional and informational/entertaining content) can cause overall social media engagement to go down.

There are several ways that a company can ensure they are getting the right balance of social media posting and content:

• Ask customers what content they want, via a status, tweet, or Facebook Question.
• Use Facebook Insights to see the involvement and virality of each post. Publish more content on those topics.
• Follow the common guidelines to post around people’s workdays. AM, Lunch, and Afternoon posts are usually clicked on most because people are using social media as a break from work (or to get ready for the day).
• Don’t automate all posts, especially if they are just links. Try to answer questions, respond to retweets, and participate in the current conversation.
• Color makes a difference. Post photos with your link previews or with status updates to be more eye-catching in a user’s newsfeed.
• Balance information with fun. Sweepstakes, jokes, and other entertaining content can keep users engaged.
• Don’t be selfish. Focus on news happening in the industry, instead of just the most current company promotion.
• Offer a behind-the-scenes look at the company: a photo album of the office, company events, and products in development.

The more willing a company is to think outside the box and offer their customers an inside glimpse into how the company works and what they care about, instead of keeping the focus on their products, the more likely they will be able to maintain a great social media balance.

Re-Pins

Re-pinning pins that relate to your industry and values is the fastest way to grow a company’s own pin boards while also getting a good idea of what is popular in those industries.

Re-pins are actually a good part of regular maintenance, as they are fairly quick to do.

Regular Maintenance

Regular maintenance of pins and the company’s Pinterest profile is just as important as maintaining any other social media profile, such as Facebook and Twitter. Besides re-pins, regular maintenance includes making sure the bio is kept updated, as well as adding links, creating new boards, and following users on a daily basis.

Add New Pins

New pins uploaded by the company can help add unique content to their Pinterest board, which makes it easy to track the true popularity (which can be judged by re-pins and likes). Additionally, companies that have e-commerce websites should also pin every product on their site, dividing them into applicable Pinterest boards.

For instance, a women’s fashion website could have separate Pinterest boards for Accessories, Dresses, Shoes, etc. The website could pin not only their own products, but also related new pins they’ve found online (while quoting sources) or re-pinning existing content from other users.

Comments

Commenting on your own pins when a user comments or likes one of your pins (or a pin that relates to the business’ industry) can help get their interest and further drive engagement, while also gaining more followers for the company’s profile.

Comments can also be used to give more information about a product if other users are asking for it, or a URL that may be of interest to users that like the pin.

Likes

Similar to “liking” certain actions on Facebook, Pinterest likes are another part of regular Pinterest maintenance that can help get attention of potential followers for a company’s Pinterest profile.

However, don’t go overboard– 5 to 10 likes per day can be accomplished quickly. Make likes more relevant by liking pins that come from the company’s website. A good way to keep track of this is to use PinAlerts, which sends an email whenever an image is pinned from a specified URL.

How is Pinterest affecting your industry and your marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments.