How Festivus Can Help You With Your Social Media

HAPPY FESTIVUS!

In this post, I’ll explain how you can use the concept of Festivus to improve your social media in 2013. If you are unfamiliar with the story of Festivus take a gander at the video below.

Bellow are my comments on how social media pages and brands have disappointed me in the last year, the “Airing of the grievances” if you will.

– Syndicating Social Media Pages – You should never, ever sync your social media pages. If you are repeating your messages, why should your fans follow you on more than one platforms?

– Keep it short and sweet – Stop posting long paragraphs on your Facebook Page. It’s rare that someone will want to read that. Try posting less than 100 characters or just an image, and measure the differences in engagement.

– Strategize – Use Facebook Insights to see which of your posts is popular and keep doing that. Let your fans dictate your postinsg

– Over Posting – Facebook’s EdgeRank Algorithm dictates how many of your fans see your posts. Not every fan will see your posts, so this encourages page admins to post and post in an effort for more fans to see their posting. The average life span of a post is 3 hours. Try only posting every 3 hours to give your post the attention it desvered.

– Under Posting – It’s important to find the right balance in posting because EdgeRank works in that Facebook will show your fans your posts when they engage with you and less often when they don’t engage with you.

– What social media is for – Your Social Media Strategy is an extension of your brand. It is meant to give insite that your fans wouldn’t get normally. The added insite will build trust and recognition, which will lead to new customers via your current ones.

– What social media isn’t for – Social media cannot directly be associated with getting new customers and making money. If you take the time to think critically about what you are posting, you’ll see many returns of the day from your fans and their friends. Your fans who love you will help you acquire new fans.

– Social Media and Your Website – I have seen archaic sites that don’t have any social media links. Take the time/money and invest in this functionality. You’ll see a great return on this investment. Once you do integrate social, make sure you are consistent, or else your new functionality will be pointless.

– Brands are not caught up – A sub strategy of social media is to connect business to business instead of business to consumer. As a page admin, it’s frustrating when a business doesn’t have a social media strategy and hasn’t posted in 4 months. It’s likely that they won’t engage with you if they post so sporadically.

I hope my grievances are addressed in 2013 and brands start to hire brand managers who know how to help them. There is a lot of pressure put on social media as it can be really beneficial, but if used incorrectly or not to it’s full potential, it’ll do more harm then good.

Do you have any social media grievances in 2012? Let us know in the comments.

***If you Google “Festivus”, you’ll see a surprise.