Hard Truths About Social Media Marketing

Over the years, I've witnessed major changes in Social Media marketing. Businesses are often struggling with the what, when, how, and why of online marketing. Social Media marketing is a moving target with new platforms launching, changing, and exiting—daily. However, over the years I've noticed that there are some MUSTS about Social Media use for business. Here’s the next on my short five-part series! If last week’s post about choosing multiple Social Media platforms didn't scare you off, let’s move on to #2.

2. Platform dictates content. Although you can, and should, re-purpose content across several platforms (i.e., share a blog post on Twitter and LinkedIn), it is imperative that you consider the content and the format of that content before sharing to specific platforms. Obviously (I hope) you likely don’t want to share a consumer product, @Handle/#Hastag rich and beautifully crafted 125 character Tweet straight to your LinkedIn Business page without giving it careful consideration. Likewise, if you are trying to cross post from LinkedIn to Twitter, that 250 character status update or image-dependent headline won’t do. You get the idea—although MANY users don’t. Content generation requires planning and planning requires strategy. Define your content and sharing based on platform- specific strategy. Know your audience on each platform, and then you can determine more accurately what content can be shared throughout. Sharing the same content automatically across all of your social profiles and pages isn't only poor marketing, it could be seen as shallow.

The hard truths are that Social Media marketing can't be done successfully with one platform or one library of content. Build content specific to your platform and use the platforms indicated by your strategy. Next week we’ll cover the 3rd Hard Truth About Social Media for Businesses—if we can find the time, that is.