Thursday 1 August 2013
Social Media: Crank Up The Volume!
‘Throw as much s**t at the wall to see what sticks.’
I’m not sure who first coined the above phrase, but I doubt it was a famous Roman Emperor or ancient philosopher. It certainly lacks eloquence but it doesn't necessarily lack relevance, especially in the realm of social media.
Obviously i’m not talking literally here (I won’t be held responsible for any new ‘wallpaper’) but i’m talking about the volume of posting. Getting as much relevant content out there is one of the most fundamental aspects of being a social media manager.
But why is volume important? And won’t it start to annoy people who follow you?
High volume of posting is extremely important because of two modern developments:
- The rise of ‘stream’ media. Nowadays we all consume vast quantities of content through online streams. Due to the nature of streams, the more relevant content you post to social streams, the more likely it’ll get seen.
- Attention spans. Over the last ten years the average human attention span dropped from twelve, to five minutes. It’s certainly not a coincidence that this statistic coincides with the rise of 24/7 stream media.
So, a high volume of relevant and high-quality content is more likely to get engagement. You need to be ever-present in order to increase the activity on your posts.
The uncertainty of Social Media.
The great (but also frustrating) aspect of social media is its unpredictable nature. As a social media manager, every post is essentially a gamble - you never know how successful each of your posts will be. In order to increase the amount of interaction each of your posts gets in this unpredictable world, it’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket or rely on a small number of posts.
For example, a colleague of mine, who is doing some social media work for a company, was advised by the company to only post to Facebook twice a week because they are scared of ‘littering’ news-feeds and therefore worried that this will cause people to ‘unlike’ them.
This is possibly one of the worst social media strategies I’ve ever heard. If you’re only posting two updates a week, you may as well not even bother at all! People follow you because they want to hear from you, they wanted to be updated, and they want to know what is going on.
Even if those two posts a week are genuinely high-quality and relevant content, the reality is most people won’t even see them because they’ll be lost in the ever-lasting stream of online content! Which takes me back to the main point of this article - the only way to get noticed is to increase the volume of relevant content you publish... unless your Justin Bieber of course.
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