Live from Confab: Content Strategy for Social Media

Bad reasons to use Social Media:

To demonstrate authority.
To increase traffic.
Because 71% of women and 62% of men on the internet use social media.
- Marli’s note: you still need to research whether YOUR users are in that 71/62%, and WHICH social media sites they’re on.

There are umpteen channels. Start with one.
The big four right now are: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or Pinterest
Facebook:
- Friendly and casual, highly visual
- Great for referral traffic, customer acquisition, audience growth, relationship building, brand awareness, events and contests
- Once people like your page, you need to put things out that show up in their newsfeed. Photos and contests are particularly good.
Twitter:
- Pithy and newsy, categorized, and immediate
- Great for sharing expertise/content, building awareness, specal offers, and customer service
- Things disappear quickly, so repeat without being repetitive
- Twitter outperfoms Facebook and LinkedIn 9-to-1 in generating leads.
Google+
- Longer form, targetted, smart and savvy
- Great for building community, sharing expertise/content, customer service, connecting with customers
- There are also great content strategy communities on Google+
- Google+ is also huge for SEO
Pinterest
- Visuals are everything, popular for retail food and fashion
- Great for brand awareness and driving traffic
- Pinterest is a predominantly female market

Monday: General retail, health and beauty, technology
Wednesday: Consumer packaged goods
Thursday: Clothing and fashion, travel and leisure
Friday: Telecommunications, travel and leisure
Weekends: Don’t forget them! Lots of people are online, planning trips, doing their shopping, planning the next week.
Afternoons are almost always best for social media. Night is the worst time to post.