Balance & Consistency - Maintaining Your Social Media Channels

My clients often ask for counsel on best practices for maintaining their social media channels and blogs. My advice is to never let those channels "get dusty" - meaning, keep them updated on a regular basis.

So what did I do?

I went way too long between blog posts here. Shame on me. You can't expect your readers to come back to your blog again and again if they don't find new content during a visit. If they keep seeing the same old posts, they won't bother checking again. There's far too much competition out there for your audience's attention to risk losing their interest.

And remember - your posts can't all be self promotional. Sure, you can sprinkle in some sales pitches here and there, and it's always a good idea to include any recent media coverage around you or your company. But it can't be just that. You need to offer constructive and thought provoking content and commentary to go along with the self promotional stuff to keep readers engaged and returning to your social media channels and blogs.

Case in point. One of my clients is in the financial services industry, and he's doing a great job on LinkedIn lately. He's posting articles from top-tier media outlets on topics relevant to his current business/past career experiences, and commenting on them. In return, he's getting a lot more hits on his profile and his counterparts are starting to add comments to his posts. By gaining their attention that way, it's much more likely those same people will also see the more self-promotional company news and media coverage posts. That's how it works. It's all about maintaining that balance in the content of your posts

I have another client in the enterprise software industry. She just founded a new company and wants to spread the good word. She's determined to be an active participant on LinkedIn in terms of regularly posting on the site so we're starting with the basics. We've updated her profile with a new head shot and added some updated bio information. Then we posted the press release on the launch of her company. It's all part of our collaborative strategy to "wake up" her LinkedIn connections and grab their attention. Now we're trying to establish a steady drumbeat of weekly posts with her commentary on industry news and other matters relevant to her company's business. As a woman founder/executive/entrepreneur, she can also add posts with commentary on "women of the C-suite" and "women in technology" issues of the day, too.

Balance and consistency - those are the two keys to your social media channel posts - including your blogs. It's all part of telling your story and keeping your target audiences coming back for more new chapters. Clearly, I need to follow my own advice more closely. I promise I will. In the meantime...

Are you ready to tell your story?

Best,
Bill