Focus On A User View Analysis Of Your Social Media Presence

Many social media marketers and even social media agencies spend a tremendous amount of time on tracking, analytics and reporting. Much of these activities give some insight into the reach and effectiveness of a social media program. However, some of that activity often ends up as “make-work” time-wasting that does not lead to actionable information of value.

One of the evaluation activities that is often overlooked is user-view analysis. User-view analysis is the viewing and evaluation of your total social media presence from the perspective of your target audience. You know what you do, the services you provide and the products you make, but does your social presence, profiles, graphics and messaging reflect that accurately to your community?

Now is where you get completely honest with yourself. Step back and pretend you are your prospective customer, then view your social media marketing from their perspective:

1) Review your feeds – What are you posting? If you were a follower or fan, would you find it interesting, fun, something you would share or comment on? Are you pitching too much? Is what you are sharing, posting and including in your various feeds relevant to the interests of your target audience?

2) Review your bio’s and profile content – If you didn’t know you or your brand at all and you looked at your twitter, facebook, fanpage or Linkedin accounts. would you understand what you do? Would it be interesting or enticing? Is the bio part human, part business or simply a cold, drab incoherent rant? If you were your target audience would YOU follow the account, like the page or accept the friend request?

*I highly suggest that unless you are a larger established brand, include YOUR or at least A name in the name field of your Twitter account.

3) Review your graphics - If you’re a solepreneur, a startup or new in social media marketing, I highly recommend that your twitter account contains YOUR picture, not just a logo. People build relationships with people, not brands and logo’s they’ve never heard of!

4) Continuity – Does the message on all of your profiles, website and blog contain the same branding, message and continuity? Once you are sure you have the proper messaging, take the time to ensure that all connection points across the social graph reflect the similar value propositions and voice.

Here are the hard facts about neglecting to walk through these steps and look at your social media presence as your target market does. What you don’t know will hurt you. Most won’t tell you how bad your profiles are or that they are not following you because of this issue or that. Nobody is going to tell you they won’t do business with you because you are poorly handling your social profiles, content and strategy…

THEY’LL JUST LEAVE!

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Content Doesn’t Matter – 4 Things To Avoid

Let me be clear here. Content that is not targeted to your audience, is not consistent in your feeds and does not spark sharing and conversations, doesn’t matter…

There are four things you need to avoid surrounding content, if you want it to matter at all.

1) Posting content without a clear intent is a great way to get your audience to tune out. You know, constant random stuff that is not at all interesting, relevant or valuable. When your community sees content like this on a frequent basis, they tend to tune out most everything else you do. Hence, Content Doesn’t Matter…

Have a clear strategy designed to consistently posting relevant, valuable content that matters to your audience.

2) Mostly retweeting and/or sharing content posted by others isn’t leading. Sourcing and curating your own content that is relevant to your target audience is imperative. Doing so creates thought leadership with your community and makes you a reliable source that is top of mind whenever they log onto the social graph. You want your audience to be looking for your posts, not passively seeing your constant sharing of others content.

If you are just going to share what other people post, know that you will get much less shares yourself. Hence, Content Doesn’t Matter…

3) Not posting enough content makes you invisible. I have often referred to social media as a Freeway. You must have enough cars (Content/Posts) on the freeway everyday so no matter when your audience steps up to the side of the freeway, one of your cars go by. You need to efficiently aggregate content that is interesting and relevant to your audience and post it consistently across the social graph.

If you are posting content a few times per day on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, you need to understand that nobody is even seeing what you post. Hence, Content Doesn’t Matter…

4) Never creating your own content won’t work. Articles, graphics, blogs and videos are all required content every company must have. Content creation has become a required component for being a thought leader in your industry.

If you are not consistently creating your own content every month, you are not going to see the best results from your social media marketing. Hence, Content Doesn’t Matter…

So again, content doesn’t matter if you are not using it properly. Focus on developing a content strategy that addresses these four areas and you will quickly see improvements in all of the appropriate metrics of your social media marketing.

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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The Importance Of Posting Content Over Just RT’ing Content

Content is the starting point of everything within the social graph. Your social media marketing program should be centered around a strategy of content posting, sharing and creation as an integral component. As I have stated previously, “content leads to conversations”. Social media content is the match that lights the conversations that help you become effective, but just any content doesn’t work. In fact you must understand the different types and be effective with them all.

There are three basic types of posts within social media:

1) Your Content – Something you/your company wrote or created

2) Posted Content – Something you found online and post to your feeds

3) Shared Content – Retweeting and/or Sharing other people’s posts

Too often I find smaller brands and individual social media marketers that are incredible at sharing Facebook content posts or Retweeting on Twitter, but what they share is often targeted to their peers, or isn’t relevant and interesting to their intended audience. What’s worse is that upon reviewing their streams, it is difficult to find something they have posted and not just shared from someone else. This is less than effective for a few reasons:

1) What are you known for?

2) What are you doing to provide value?

We have found that having a consistent daily flow of relevant, valuable content for your intended audience is the single best thing you can do to get conversations started. Doing this on a consistent basis helps you be known for something or better yet, a few things. Your audience will get accustomed to the relevant content they can find in your streams at any given time and will not just see it when it passes through their stream, but will actually seek you out to get it.

“It’s hard to get conversations started without relevant content” #quote @fondalo

Like any relationship, on or offline, value must be at the core. Simply sharing or retweeting content to your community is lazy and ineffective. A strategy, proper resources and time must be put into sourcing relevant content for your audience, as well as creating content they will find valuable.

Before anyone thinks I am proposing to not share or retweet, think again. That too is important, but needs to be at measured levels that allow YOUR content posting and creation strategy to have its own voice.

Here are some tips for being effective with your posts:

1) Know your audience – What are they interested in?

2) Consistency is key – Everyday, all day, have relevant content in your feeds.

3) Be known for something – When your community thinks of you, your posts should have created a description of you or your brand in their mind.

Go forth and post relevant, valuable content!

Robert M. Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post