As a business marketer do you take special care when posting content on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn? In my case I’m not very particular about Twitter because there I exchange all sorts of views including content writing and content marketing, politics, religion, literature, philosophy, and pretty much everything I find amusing, interesting and worth sharing. If you want to follow me on Twitter for a particular reason, I’m afraid you’re not going to get it. These days I am mostly followed by either those who somehow discover that I post lots of stuff on content marketing and content writing, or the Indian right-wingers because of my political leanings.
On Facebook, on my personal profile I rarely post content marketing-related content. It’s mostly personal, political, social or religious and yes, literary.
On LinkedIn it’s strictly business. I use my LinkedIn profile to promote my blog posts, articles and other content writing and content marketing related webpages. I’m happy that, due to this, I have got some nice assignments from my LinkedIn connections.
Google+ is a mix of business as well as business-related interesting stuff. I don’t share my political opinions on Google+.
On Twitter I have a separate profile to handle my business content, though. Even on Facebook I have created a dedicated page to promote my content writing and content marketing services. But unlike my blog, I’m not very regular with my business profiles on Facebook and Twitter, although, I must dedicate some time to it.
Jeff Bullas in his recent blog post rightly says that not all social media networks are equal. He says:
Social media is a great way to attract that attention. But that doesn’t mean you can just throw your link out there and people will come flocking. If you want your content to succeed on the major social media networks, you must consider who you are sharing it with. Then, you can write the perfect copy and produce the best content and optimize it for each social network to lure them in.
He also explains, comprehensively, what sort of content is appropriate for which social network and which sort of content elicits the most vibrant response.
How do I write content for my clients for their social media and social networking platforms?
Yes, I do take up assignments for writing content for my clients for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and even Tumblr. How do I decide what to write?
Just as Jeff has explained, I choose different content for different social networking profiles. I also carry out a study of their connection profiles. For LinkedIn you can be sure that only professionals are going to exchange information but a platform like Facebook can be capricious. You can find professionals as well as colleagues and relatives. For instance, in the fag end of the previous year I got a very plum assignment from one of my Facebook friends. Even before that I got 3-4 good project from Facebook. So it also depends on what sort of people you follow and what sort of people follow you.
Fortunately, all the clients who have approached me are not as casual about their social networking platforms as I am with my Twitter profile. They normally post very focused content and this is what they want when they hire me. I carefully go through the content they have posted so far, and the content their followers and friends have shared, the nature of the content that elicits greater response (Likes, Shares, Plusses, Retweets and Favorites) and the frequency with which their users and friends use the platforms. Accordingly I formulate their social media content strategy.
Whereas I have got work from Facebook and LinkedIn, surprisingly, Twitter, where I am the most active, I have never gotten work from.