Curate – Create – Communicate

At Concise we manage a range of social media channels for a number of clients. We firmly believe that social media content should be a mixture of original content and curated content. One of our team, Viv shares her daily process:

Having already established who I am creating content for, identified their audience and the right channels for their business, I am ready to start curating content for each of their channels.
I spend around 15 minutes every morning scanning for content to curate for clients. This daily ritual ensures that content is fresh and relevant and keeps me up to date with industry trends and developments and is often a source of inspiration for new content.

1 – Curate

As much as I like original content, this takes a great deal of time and most brands will need a system for curating content that appeals to their audience. Curated content adds interest; another dimension encourages network with influencers and creates a rich tapestry of content that audiences want to share.
My first port of call for resources across most channels is the client blog, after that, I visit Feedly and Scoop.it for articles which are useful for searching by topic. I also keep a short list of industry newsletters, newspaper sectors and favourite bloggers for each client.

Different content works for each of the different channels we manage:

Facebook – You can create lists for curating content based on liked pages and interests. I also search for inspirational quotes, funny memes and shareable links. Posts tend to attract a much higher reach than links, in my experience – Facebook algorithms have a habit of stifling reach for links to your website as leverage to opt for paid adverts and boosted content.

Twitter – I create a number of lists for each client including influencers, prospects, clients, competitors and topics relevant to the brand. I use Hootsuite to manage these lists and also listen out for relevant hashtags and keywords. I can then easily cherry-pick useful content to retweet or comment on. Typically I post 7 times a day on Twitter as well as retweets and mentions and I try to keep to a ratio of only 1 in every 7 tweets direct selling.

LinkedIn – For LinkedIn I create a schedule to post different types of content each day, perhaps a quote or research article to ask people to comment on, ask questions, join discussions and seek opinion. I often share content from thought-leaders, although people in your network may be aware of them, it may be useful to make their content easier to digest. The common thread here is engagement with the people in your network to ultimately expand your network.

Pinterest – Most of the pins on Pinterest are about things that have already happened and what people want to achieve. It’s a great place to showcase your products and services that can be harvested from your website. Images that inspire people to get creative with your product or service work very well. Curated content that your followers will find useful is key to building a profile that is the ‘go to’ resource for your area of expertise.

2 – Create

The best social media content is that which resides on your website. At Concise Training, we aim to create one blog post per week and repurpose content across the channels in snippets, excerpts and links to extend the life of the content and reach more people. Concise has a calendar of monthly themes with topics and events to underpin our blog posts, newsletters and update profiles across all channels and we encourage our clients to do something similar.

It is widely accepted that images boost engagement and encourage shares. I create distinctive, branded visual content that enables people to discover more about the brand and encourages them to make a personal connection. You can read more about creating images to boost engagement here.

3 – Communicate

Now that you have created your content it is time to communicate!
At Concise Training, we have a process for communicating content. Generally speaking, we schedule only a few days in advance to keep content current. Content is not only shared on our networks but also through email newsletters. Particularly for Twitter, we often repurpose content; aside from dedicated followers, with the unrelenting surge of content on Twitter, it is likely that a good proportion of what you post can pass by unread. We communicate blog posts through a series of excerpts across our social media channels. This is not only because it is a source of new content but because more often than not, people read blogs not by visiting websites directly, but through the snippets we share. There are numerous business benefits of maintaining a blog that we explore in more detail here.

For every client we manage, we respond to comments promptly (checking with clients where necessary) and make a point of thanking people for taking the time to reach out with comments and messages. Sometimes lengthy or offline conversations or can be sparked by a single comment so they can be a valuable way of increasing awareness of what a client’s brand stands for. In order to encourage commenting, I try and finish off blog posts with a request for input from the reader… so what are you waiting for?