Over the last ten years, social media has gone from cute little platform for kids to interact, to massive corporate tentpole. For competitive brands, it has become an invaluable marketing asset, but as it’s 2017, you’ve probably figured that out for yourself. Where most brands struggle today is in discovering what to post and when to post it, as this dilemma can impact a variety of important business functions that include brand relevance and community management. Content curation, along with a few simple posting strategies, can resolve both questions of what and when, can help you grow your social media profiles, and can increase your ability to interact with consumers.
Let’s address the burning question at hand, what is content curation? In this context, content refers to news, blogs, videos, images, opinions pieces, and the like that may be relevant to your business or industry. The process of curation refers to culling this content down to pieces that you’d be comfortable sharing on your social media profiles. In simple terms, you’re looking for other people’s content that would be interesting to your consumers. You’re not looking to push product, but rather build a relationship with those that follow each of your profiles. This relationship ensures that when it is time to advertise a specific product or service, your followers will trust you enough to at least consider your offer. This means that it’s worth sharing a viral image, or a post about the ten best day hikes in your state, as long as it helps drive shares and likes, which in turn increases the visibility of your profile.
Once you’ve selected a few pieces you’d like to share with your audience, rather than sharing them sporadically or all at once, you need to find a consistent schedule. Without consistency, you run the risk of being forgotten and unfollowed, either from users not knowing when to expect content or from over sharing. Think of it like your own television channel; if you only showed content every once in a while, and nobody ever knew when it would be on, they would most likely stop watching.
I’d recommend posting once or twice a day (barring some event or special circumstance), this makes sure that your followers get something each and every day, but they’re also not burned out from seeing a slew of your posts all in a short time span. Trust me, no one needs to know that much about car repair. When it comes to scheduling these posts, there are a few different tools you can use, I’d recommend Hootsuite, although a few social platforms, including Facebook, let you schedule natively within your account. Finally, most metrics indicate that the best two physical times to post on social media are generally around 11 am and 7 pm. However, you can find more specific information about when your audience is online from the Insights tab on your company’s Facebook page, or the analytics portion of your other social profiles.
Content curation is a great strategy to slide into your proverbial marketing tool box. It can help you stay in touch with your audience, as well as help paint your company in a favorable light. In addition, it helps you to be seen as a thought leader in your industry. Remember, building relationships is critical to success, online and off, and consistent content is a great way to build that relationship with your key audiences.
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