By Eleanor Pierce
Sometimes I’m still surprised by the number of brands that spend all their time on social media talking about themselves, and I don’t think that’s exactly fair.
Those of us who live and breathe in this world know it’s tricky to keep an audience’s attention if you’re just speaking French all the time (we, we, we – get it? I stole it from this awesome book I read recently).
Not everyone’s been practicing and thinking about social media content for quite as long as the Spin Sucks community.
But the “don’t talk about yourself all the time” message still hasn’t gotten out, judging by some of the Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, YouTube channels, Google+ pages, and LinkedIn profiles I run across on a daily basis.
Approved Social Media Content
Rather than beat it into peoples’ heads again, I thought I’d provide a list of four things you can do on social media OTHER than talk about yourself.
These will work for a pretty wide array of businesses, whether you’re doing B2B social media, B2C social media, whether you’re big or small.
Here we go!
- Talk about what your customers are doing. There’s a good chance your customers are more interesting to your other customers than you are. Share photos of your customers. Tell their stories. B2B? Talk about their successes. Interview one of your clients about a lesson they’ve learned—how they solved a problem your other customers might have—throw it up on your website, and then talk about (and link to) that case study on your social channels. B2C? Show customers using your product. If it’s food, share recipes from your customers. Share the photos they’ve taken of their food. The options are endless.
- Dig into the problems you solve. Note that this is different than talking about how you are so great at solving the problem. Focus instead on the intricacies of the problem. Do you help people keep their floors clean? Then talk about how much dirt dogs track into the house. And how much dirt really gets into peoples’ carpets. Share studies on the nasty germs we track onto our floors—the very floors our kids play on! (I’m sort of kidding, but not really).
- Comment on trends. Whatever world you move in, whether it’s fashion, social media, or baking, there are trends you can comment upon. Fashion: Birkenstocks are back! Communications: Are you on the Instagram bandwagon yet? Baking: Seriously, you guys, toast is trendy.
- Stop talking and go multi-media. Share a day-in-the-life video. Share a photo you took while visiting with one of your customers or clients. Put your favorite on-brand quote on a cool photo you took and share that.
Those are just a few ideas to get you started.
What are your favorite ideas for social media content that isn’t all about “we, we, we”?
photo credit: andres.thor via photopin cc