Brian Solis uses a term called Social Objects which refers to digital assets you create. Examples of social objects are:
- Photos on Flickr
- Videos on You Tube
- Events via Facebook, Twitvite, Plancast
- Social Bookmarks on Delicious,
- Documents on Scribd
- Powerpoints on Slideshare
- Comments on Blogs
- Check in on Foursquare
But what do you do once you have created those social objects? Social Media networks are the platforms utilized to distribute those assets with the expectation that users will share to their friends and circles of influence.
Statistics show that 78.6% of users connect with brands to learn, 78% want first access to notices of new products and 69.6% want free content. Therefore, for social objects to be shared, the content has to be valuable since the largest percentage of people want to learn something new. What good does it do to slap up a piece of content just to fill up space. Much of the information out there looks the same and people scan very quickly to find something good.
Sure, people expect free content because so much is easily available on the internet with a quick Google search. But if they find you and provide something of interest, they may come back or subscribe to your blog or email newsletter.
One of the biggest struggles for small businesses when setting up their CMS(Content Management System) such as this website which utilizes WordPress is updating and keeping content fresh. I myself, an avid blogger, sometimes struggle with this because I maintain several websites and now I am helping other clients in Social Media. I don’t stress so much about it because when I post an article or video, I take the time to be in a space where I am not hurried so I can convey a message that is clear and beneficial to the person reading.
Besides that I take time to optimize my blog posts for SEO(Search Engine Optimization) to take advantage of searches on Google besides the sharing in the Social Networks. By the time I am done, a good video blog post will have taken me hours. So my strategy is to provide quality content. A great way to develop good content if you are a small business with various employees is to motivate them to create articles of interest based on projects your company is working at. It is as simple as creating a calender and publishing schedule.
For example:
- Monday – Shoot a 2 minute video about something your company is doing, edit, upload to You Tube, optimize with keywords and share in the social networks
- Tuesday- Record an MP3 while driving and forward to assistant to transcribe as text article. Upload as blog post and embedded MP3 podcast
- Wednesday – Share a picture or photo album of an event your company did to Facebook and Flickr
- Thursday – Research hashtags in niche for increased followings on Twitter. Join a Twitter Party
- Friday- Read Tweets of lists created and interact. (Ideally this should be done every day)
This is just a skeleton publishing schedule to get an idea of how you can start creating your own social objects. Before you know it, people will be talking about you and sharing it. It works, but you have to have the patience as it develops and don’t get overwhelmed with everything out there. You can start just on two social networks like Twitter and Facebook, or Twitter and Linked In.
What are your major challenges in creating a publishing schedule?
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