When, Why, Where, Who, and What to post

Do you struggle with trying to figure out the social media game? Don't worry, there are millions of entrepreneurs, small businesses, medium sized businesses ane large businesses to corporations that are struggling to pinpoint their social media markeing mix.

The good thing is that there is no definitive guide to social media marketing, there is no magic bullet to gaming the algorithms. However, there are best practices and structures that others have followed to gain traction in their social media marketing. I'll share with you a couple of strategies that have worked exceptionally well for businesses and brands regardless of size.

Let's start by defining a couple of things before we proceed.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers. (Wikipedia)

Now, that's a solid definition, I didn't have to look far to find something that provided a sound summary to what social media marketing entails.

Which Platforms Are the Best?

The answer is all of them. I do realize that doesn't exactly help you, but I'll help you get started and/or restart. If you're spinning your wheels with social media marketing, the best strategy is to start with one platform.

This is recommended because social media platforms are solely built upon audiences and followers. In order to build an audience you need to be present, deliver value, and share information that is consumable to your ideal target audience.

Let's use Facebook as an example. Hootsuite reports that 5.20% of your total audience (likes and followers) are seeing your organic posts on your Facebook business page. If you have 10,000 followers, 520 profiles are seeing your posts. If you have 1,000 followers, 52 profiles are seeing your posts. Facebook and other platforms are pay-to-play platforms. These platforms allow you to reach a larger audience simply by paying for your post to either be:

1. Boosted Post: Boost the post to more followers/likes of your current audience
2. Ran as an Advertisement: Shared with those you specifiy in your targeting

So, you run into two scenarios...

1. Build your audience to generate more followers and generate more page likes
2. Run ads to build your audience with more followers and page likes

That's just Facebook. Instagram used to have gooroos that would recommend a follow-for-follow strategy, and once you received a follow back, you would unfollow that profile. The ratio of followers to folllowing would determine how powerful your profile would be, therefore more of your content would be displayed in suggested in the search or reels option.

Twitter has an entirely different algorithm. Tiktok, an entirely different algorith. LinkedIn, another set of strategies.

So, what is one to do just to get a solid and sound social media strategy?

As recommended above, start with one platform and build your audience.

Social Media Content Strategy

Don't get frustrated, there is a systematic way to get started off on the right foot with your content strategy for social media.

1. Identify Goals: Set some goals for yourself as it relates to your social media content, if you want engagement, likes, shares, or inbound leads. Set your goals so you can create content to support those goals.
2. Research your audience: Who is your ideal audience, or your ideal client profile, or your target audience? Whichever terminology you prefer, identify who that is, and start to research the information they consume and find valuable
3. Analyze your competitors: In the massive world of social media marketing, there is room for everyone at the table. Let's not think that if someone is doing something, you're not able to. You have just as much of an opportunity to generate an audience as your competitors do.
4. Audit your current content: This includes your sales collateral, your brochures, your magazine ads, your newspaper ads, your direct mailers, blog posts, tradeshow material, etc. The goal of auditing your content is to determine if your message has been on point this entire time, or if you're all over the board. Now is the time to get your message on track, and be consistent with your message and your brand.
5. Choose your content: You may be able to recycle a lot of the message, verbiage, stories, etc. from the current content you have already distributed. Re-hash your content so you are delivering the RIGHT MESSAGE, to the RIGHT PEOPLE at the RIGHT TIME. That's the magic formula that hasn't changed since the days of mail order catalogues and has proven to be effective in todays digital landscape.
6. Build a Content Calendar: I know this is a daunting task, but it is highly recommended that you build out a content calendar. This doesn't have to be overly complicated, it simply has to be a laid out plan for distribution and which content goes out each week, month or quarter. I love to work in 90 day sprints, and build out content calendars for clients within 90 day sprints in mind, and we have something to assess once the sprint is completed.
7. Distribute your content: Now is the time when the rubber meets the road. Go out and start distributing your content on your primary platform. Stick to just one, so you don't get overworked and pulled in 20 different directions.
8. Measure your results: After your 90 day sprints, you can look back and assess which worked, what didn't work, which pieces of content were the most effective in accordance to your KPIs that matter the most.

Content Distribution Strategies

The Original 4-1-1 Method

The most recommended strategy is the 4-1-1 method. The 4-1-1 method simply implies that you provide 6 posts per week in a structured manner.

4 - Educational or Entertaining Posts

1 - Soft Sale Post (click to learn more)

1 - Hard Sale Post (buy today, limited time only)

This has been recommended since 2012, and I do firmly believe that the algorithms have changed, and consumers have changed their scrolling and social media following habits.

The New 4-1-1 Method

The new 4-1-1 method has changed slightly, but mostly revolves around curated or shared content. Here is what this structure looks like.

4 - Curated or shared content from another business/brand

1 - Post original content (you researched and wrote)

1 - Promotional content (selling soft or hard)

There are a couple of reasons this has been recommended. First off, you're not sitting around thinking of ideas for content, you can simply share 4 pieces of content that align with your thinking. You only have to worry about one piece of educational or entertaining content - and - you are sharing one promotional piece.

The 5-3-2 Rule

This is another strategy to help you structure your content into actionable bite-sized steps.

5 - Curated and shared posts

3 - Content you create and shared by you (personally)

2 - Non-work related content to humanize your business

The 70-20-10 Rule

In any given sprint period, this strategy states that you should place the following into your content distribution strategy:

70% - Value posts you create with tips, pointers, data, surveys, events, etc

20% - Curated and shared posts

10% - Promotional posts looking to generate inquiries, leads or sales

The E5 Method

This is my personal method I use with all of my marketing clients. This is the method that helps break up content into easily managed pieces of information they can play out, write, distribute and measure.

E1 - Educational content with data, analytics, research, etc

E2 - Entertainment posts with funny, entertaining or shareable content

E3 - Engagement posts asking for feedback from the audience

E4 - Empowering posts that share actionable step anyone can take

E5 - Encouraging them to take action (inquiry, lead form or purchase)

These can be done during regular business hours, and be just one post per day. If you're planning out a 90 day sprint, you'll need 13 posts of each E. Those go out like clockwork on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. I do recommend that each piece of content is written in the blog to piggyback off of the boost in SEO with the added content to your website, each click-through garners you credit from the clicks and engagement. Essentially, this is a content marketing strategy revolving around blogging that helps you bolster your social media at the SAME TIME. So, you're not banging your head against a wall trying to do both. You're accomplishing an increase in your SEO while building an audience.

Next Steps

Determine which strategy you feel works best for you and proceed with the steps identified in this article. If you don't have time to write, look to curate or share. If you have time to write, then look to the E5 Method.

Whichever method you choose will help you bolster your social media marketing and help you start to build your audience by distributing shareable, likeable, and engaging content.

Enjoy!