Business tips for sharing content on social media

by Startacus Admin

Clever, witty, insightful, thought-provoking, and intelligent content forms the backbone of many businesses nowadays, and key in ensuring that this valuable commodity delivers the maximum positive impact is social media.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn  , and a whole host of other networks have created a potentially colossal global readership for your work; but making sure that your content stands out against the deafening roar of information is becoming a progressively more demanding task.

It’s no longer a case of ‘write it and they will come’ or even ‘share it and they will come’; no, today’s content promoter needs to be much more measured to achieve the results they want.

Building a strong and valuable social media following is incredibly difficult. To lend a little business and startup support, we have compiled our 6 top tips for sharing content via social media.

Know your social media aims and objectives

The first step in being effective in the sharing of content through social media is creating content which helps to deliver on the aims and objectives of your social media strategy.

Most businesses can benefit from some form of social media presence, but their purpose in doing so can vary quite significantly. Likewise, different networks will offer your business different benefits, so as well as having an overarching strategy you also need to think about more focused aims and objectives.

Some of the aims that you might have for your social media strategy include helping you;

• To gain credibility amongst your industry

• To directly promote your products / services to a target market

• To connect with other industry professionals and establish working relationships

• To engage with your existing customers

Knowing your social media aims and objectives, and sharing content which fits your requirement of a specific network, will help to encourage the benefits that you hope to obtain.

Most importantly, before sharing content across social media platforms, be sure that it serves your purpose and doesn’t water down or conflict with your intentions.

Keep your brand image central at all times

This rule holds true for many aspects of your business operations but especially when it comes to social media. This point is not only about avoiding embarrassing social media mistakes  , but also making sure that the following you create closely serves your intentions for it.

Many businesses have made the mistake of assuming that a growing audience and a large community of followers will automatically convert into a higher number of sales, but this is often not the case. Sharing generalist content will of course encourage a larger number of followers, but in the long run all this does is create a generalist community; one which is unlikely to engage with your business in any meaningful (or indeed profitable) way.

This rule is also important to bear in mind when sharing other people’s content, which (whether you agree or not) is often viewed as an endorsement, and thus a reflection of your own business.

Don’t ignore potentially useful networks

By most people’s reckoning there are 2 - 3 major social media platforms that can offer value to their business; these are usually a combination of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. As important as these 3 are, they do not constitute a thorough representation of the world of social media, and some of the small sites can offer unique opportunities for the sharing of content.

Think about what value there could be for you business within the likes of Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, or indeed any network which appeals particularly to your target market / industry.

Create content that encourages discussion and interaction

Remember that the fundamental purpose of social media is just that; social.

Approaching from the perspective of a business, it can be easy to forget that Twitter, Facebook, and so forth only exist because of people’s desire to connect, share, and collaborate with one another. This is something that you should use to your advantage by creating and sharing the kinds of content that people within your network love to become engaged with.

By doing this, you will help to ensure that your message is spread, not only amongst your own followers, but to those within their networks. This opens up the opportunity for your business to be discovered by a much wider audience, and is one of the key reasons why businesses find social media such a valuable tool.

Sharing content which encourages engagement, also gives you a great opportunity to interact with your audience across these networks, building online relationships and helping to add a human quality to your business and its social media presence.

Share content more than once and don't forget about time zones

Regardless of whether you are a business with a very specific geographic trading area, or one trying to attract attention from all corners of the globe, sharing your content multiple times is likely to have a positive influence on your return you get from it. It’s just common sense.

Information on social networks tends to be transitory, particularly when it comes to Twitter and Facebook. As a result, once posted, the likelihood that your content will be discovered diminishes significantly over time. By reposting content you increase the chance that interested parties will encounter it and subsequently engage with it.

Also, If you are trying to attract a wider audience, remember to take different time zones into consideration when scheduling the sharing of your content.

Be visual

There are social media platforms dedicated specifically to the sharing of visual content, but this is something which you should try to apply across all of your networks. All studies conducted on the subject have shown that visual content enjoys a higher level of engagement than that which is solely text based. Here the old adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ certainly holds true, but perhaps a fitting amendment for the modern world would be ‘a picture is worth a thousand clicks’.

Where possible, use striking, clever and thought provoking images to critique or summarise the message contained within your content; if carried out effectively this can significantly increase the level of engagement you see.

Hopefully you have found this useful, don’t forget there’s lots of other startup support in our fabulous business toolkit.

Did you know that here at Startacus we use all kinds of social media? Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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Published on: 23rd January 2015