Avoid the Reposting Rut

Social media posting apps like Hootsuite offer an easy way to keep up with your social media outreach. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can get your message out via a variety of networks at once. It’s efficient. But is it effective?
To effectively manage your social media efforts, start with an editorial calendar that plots out posting strategy over a set period of time, preferably monthly or quarterly. Remember that people use different social media channels for different types of information—resist the temptation to replicate the same post over all of your social media sites.
Ideally, when you are creating social content, you match the type of material you post to the nature of the platform. Because Instagram is great for user-generated content, consider using it for a company contest or promotion. Present a demonstration via YouTube or Slideshare. Post a staff recipe on Pinterest. LinkedIn works well for longer form content, such as articles—particularly those aimed at a business audience. Facebook is well suited to showing the culture and personality of your business.
If you want the thrust of a particular post to remain the same, tweak it to reflect the tone, style and size constraint of each platform. You can further mix things up by posting at different intervals. Take a Facebook post from earlier in the week, change it up a little for a different audience and repost on LinkedIn a few days later.
Finally, rather than use apps like Hootsuite to simply distribute your communications, use it to manage your communications. These type of services provide a great way to visualize how and when you are communicating which help keep your messages fresh and interesting.
Laura Tobin is the Vice President of Gallinghouse Marketing + Creative. She is a 25+ year veteran of the ad industry with regional and national experience in marketing. Gallinghouse is located at 409 W. 21st Ave., Covington. For more information call 985-893-7631 or visit gallinghouse.com