What to Share on Social Networks

Ready to share all your secrets to the world? Good! In this lesson you can learn a little about what to share on social networks. This can be a challenge for a lot of folks who are just starting out in social media marketing or aren't getting engagement with their long-term social campaigns.

Type of Sharing

We've categorized different types sharing into four different sections.

Authentic and Non-Brand Focused Contribution

Authentic and non-brand focused contributions are up first! These type of shares are things like fun and interesting photos. Let's say you're on a trip and snap a photo, then tweet it. These can be self-referential updates. They can be geographic or activity call-outs. These shares mostly fit these forms: "I'm engaged in this right now. I'm in this city right now. I'm doing these things."

You can also be expressing opinions that don't necessarily have to do directly with your brand, your company, or your field of expertise. In fact it's good to share broader opinions that are attempting to create some affinity between you and the people who follow you.

Any share of off-topic content and links. These types of shares can help build your authenticity. You want to be sharing things that are showing who you really are and creating empathy between you and your followers.

Brand Promotion

Brand-focused promotional content is very common. I'm sure most of you are familiar with this if you've been in the social networking world. Brand promotion means you're sharing content and links on your own website to drive traffic, share products, or tell your audience about specials. This is the type of stuff that is most common in the social world.

Brand promotion is smart, but wouldn't focus entirely on this. Only a few big brands can get away with sort posting sales and specials and not sharing anything else. It's much more effective when you broaden out from just promoting yourself.

Promote Others

Promoting the work of others and helping their visibility grow is really important on social networks. This is fantastic because when you promote other people on social networks, reciprocity means that you'll often receive something back in return. People who see that you're engaging and sharing the work of others and not being entirely self-centric will actually find your brand more engaging to follow.

You can recognize the contributions by offering thanks and praise for someone who has done something wonderful for your industry. This sends a great message to your community and makes it stronger.

Loving Your Community's Content

The last type of sharing is a way of responding to updates or content from your community. Remember, by "your community," we don't mean the people who you are actually following or who are following you. Your community is the one you've chosen to adopt as your own or whoever you believe to be in your world. This includes influencers over your audience, your specific audience, and people in your industry.

You can reply to folks who've mentioned or engaged with your social presence. Make sure you're jumping into relevant conversations where you believe you can add value, create a great dialogue or have a positive interaction. That kind of engagement can drive a ton of value as well. All of these are components of building an authentic, high-quality social media brand.

When to Share, What

There are a few things to think about in terms of what to share on the content type and frequency.

Type of Content

The first is content type. Try ask yourself, "Is all I'm ever doing tweeting text and leaving text-based Facebook updates? Am I just sharing links? Am I only mentioning other people? Or am I broadening out and having multimedia, sharing some images, sharing some video, sharing some links to my stuff and to others, ad replying sometimes?" A mix tends to have the most success.

Frequency

Common intervals to share certain content are put daily, hourly, and weekly buckets. Monthly should be off the table. If you're doing monthly participation, you're not really using the social media world to its fullest potential. Most platforms should have a daily level of interaction. If there's one or two that are less frequent, like a blog that you're engaging could be weekly only.

Sharing Goals

You should be thinking about the goals of sharing. Whenever you share something on social media it is good to remember that you're representing a brand and you're trying to do marketing. Are you trying to drive traffic, grow your following, add value to a industry or create brand identity. Other great goals are to learn and encourage dialogue, get feedback, and answer peoples' questions.

Analyze Your Success

You can use metrics like Facebook shares, retweets, shares on Google+, likes, plus ones, and favorites. Also track clicks and visits if you use a tracking service like Bitly or Buffer. You can also use social analytics in tools like Followerwonk and Moz Analytics to get a good idea of you engagement and audience.

Remember to always revisit the fundamental questions, "Why am I sharing, what should I be sharing, and how often should I be sharing?"