how you post and share content matters
If you listen to me long enough and you’ll know I am more focused on social networking and being engaged than creating content. I’ll keep saying it too….
Your content is designed to play a supporting role.
People do business with people. They build relationships. They act on those relationships. When they choose to act is when your content matters. It is at that point they will read (or read again). It is at that point they will decide if, aside from having that relationship with you, they trust you are the right person or business to hire.
Content isn’t the most important thing…. what you post and more importantly, HOW you write, post or share content IS critical.
Your content MUST have a purpose
Your content MUST serve a purpose. It must help build relationships, must be authoritative and/or must drive action.Click To TweetNot every post needs to do all of it, and the best content will hit multiple points. If your content doesn’t hit on at least one of those points, you’re wasting your time posting it. PERIOD.
I adore Rhonda over at Fat Dog Creatives. She’s a fantastic graphic designer and her process is incredible. She’s also a big proponent of me (yes, I have an ego).
She shared one of my Facebook posts about the value of engagement to her business page. I immediately thanked her (as Tactical Social Media, though I could have as myself.) and as quickly as I did, I scolded her. Love that she shared it, hate that while it was good for me, it did nothing for her!
She already decided to share my content. She gave me something, so why not leverage it to truly nurture the relationship, to establish her own authority, drive some action and share a little bit of herself? She should use it further help herself.
Blindly posting or sharing content provides little value to YOU. Make what you post count for you AND your audience.Click To Tweet
How you create your post matters
How the share first appeared…..
Here’s the edited version…..
The difference?
She leveraged my content to help build her authority. She continues to nurture our relationship (more than simply sharing my content, she acknowledges she is learning from me – that ego thing again) and she is making it personal and herself more relatable to her clients.
The bonus… Rhonda will get some HUGE additional visibility:
* She tagged me (with permission – do not ever tag a person in a business post without permission. It is rude and a relationship killer) placing her post on my timeline. Her brand was promoted to my personal network.And since I was tagged personally, I responded personally. That adds further reach.
* She has real content that could be found later when someone uses Facebook’s search function (and trust me, they do!).
While I will continue to preach that content is less important than social engagement, there is no doubt content is vital. It’s not about how much content you post, how often or when.
It is about WHAT you post and HOW you post and share content that matters.
What if you could spend less time writing content and still drive web traffic and generate leads?
Oh. Wait. You can….and I do!
Social Networking: Lead Generation Without Content
I spend the majority of my time actively networking, not posting and sitting on my ass hoping my content is seen. I follow specific people and pages. I interact, support and add value. That simply activity, which is easy and honestly, fun, is what YOU should be doing and what I have found to be the BEST way to leverage my time on social media.
One of those I follow is my friend (and one of my influencers) Debra Jason. We met on social media through a mutual friend. While we have yet to meet in person, we have spent a good deal of time networking together and supporting each other.
I am always reading her content (it is that good). She recently shared a post from her website, The Write Direction. As a standard practice I commented on the post itself and to further support her, also took the time to add a comment directly on the blog post itself.
The result of networking and interacting with Debra:
- I saw her social share of the post.
- I added a valuable comment on social and the blog post itself
- One of her blog readers saw my comment.
Apparently, the comment made an impression. Not only did they track back to my post (Want Results From Facebook? Stop Sitting On Your Ass!), they filled out my lead capture form to sign up to receive my content in their inbox!
A perfect example of driving web traffic and lead generation WITHOUT content.
I’ll add this is not an isolated example of driving web traffic from social networking. There is this one:
And this one:
Social networking is how I have been able to leverage social media effectively to build my brands since 2007, and it’s proven to remain highly effective through all of the algorithm changes.
A single value-added comment might just be worth far more than any piece of content you post.
Consider spending less time on your content and more on being active, visible and engaged.Click To Tweet
