Here is a all-too-common abuse of Social Media. Many clients are attracted to the "sexiness" of Twitter and Facebook as they regularly post content with the proper objective to drive awareness and sales. However, after updating Facebook and Twitter
they fail to incorporate the content into their own site. This is an unforgivable faux pas.
While it's great to leverage Facebook and Twitter, we have to understand that your content
mostly benefits the social media sites -- generating page views and advertising dollars
for them (and this is why they make it so easy
for you to add new information).
The objective of any business' social media strategy is to
generate awareness and to drive traffic to your site. And when folks arrive at your site (however they get there), they need
fresh,
interesting and
relevant information.
But when you post content on someone else's (social media) site and not your own, you are foregoing the benefits of:
- Content ownership as your information becomes the property of the social media firm (read the T&C fine print)
- Enhanced reputation as non-users of your selected social media cannot easily find your content (for example: non-users of Twitter will never find your Tweets).
- Greater SEO page ranking (and free organic advertising) as the content is not attributed to your site
So, don't spend all of your time giving away these key advantages to Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) or Dick Costolo (CEO of Twitter); they already have gobs of money from content you created for them.
We encourage every company to use Persuasive Brands' three simple rules for posting content on social media:
- Post all content on your site first -- no exceptions.
- If you have time or social media reaches a unique or valuable audience, then post.
- Ensure all social media posts contain a link to your site.
At the end of the day, you want to drive folks to your business and be the beneficiary of your own content.
