Topics: Social Media Content Marketing
Here's a Strategy that will Save You Time and Grow Your Audience
Author: Chris Heiler
Using social media to effectively market your green industry business is not easy. It's a lot of work--especially content creation.
Content creation can be extremely difficult. It takes a lot of time--time that we don't have much of to begin with.
I've written about the benefits of repurposing your content in the past. Repurposing your content into different forms not only saves you time but it allows you to reach a greater number of followers with your message.
Very similar to repurposing is what I call "cross-pollinating" content. This can be as simple as linking a photo from your Flickr stream to your Facebook Page. Or embedding one of your YouTube videos into your Facebook Page. This is super easy to do yet I think a lot of companies overlook it as a way to share content online.
Beyond the time saving benefit, the most value comes from moving your audience from one network to another. Your social graph from each network starts to overlap. For example, when you share one of your Pinterest pins on Twitter, it's likely that a few of your Twitter followers will also start following your activity on Pinterest.
You create a web of content and social activity.
Below are some more examples. I suggest making these a regular part of your social media content plan and editorial calendar.
On your Facebook Page
As I mentioned, embed your YouTube videos. You can also embed Flickr slide shows in a similar fashion. Link to some of your Pinterest boards as well as individual pins. Link to your latest blog post. I do not suggest automatically sending your tweets to your Facebook Page.
On your blog
You can embed almost any media in a blog post, such as:
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YouTube videos
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Flickr slide shows and individual images
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Individual tweets (see here for how to do it)
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Pinterest pins (I absolutely LOVE this, see an example here)
On Twitter
You can include a link to virtually anything in your Twitter stream, such as:
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Your latest blog post
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Pinterest pins and boards
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Images on Flickr and Facebook
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YouTube videos
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Instagram images
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Foursquare check-ins
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Updates from Facebook (I would do this very infrequently)
Neave Group Outdoor Solutions in New York (client) publishes a monthly email newsletter. Each month, instead of creating brand new content for the newsletter, they repurpose other "social" content from the previous month--mainly blog posts and images from Flickr and Pinterest. This moves newsletter readers to Neave's other social outposts.
Next time you upload an image to Flickr or pin a photo to a Pinterest board, ask yourself, "What next?". Where can you share that image? On your Facebook Page? Twitter? Write a short blog post about it? How are you repurposing and cross-pollinating your content? Any other suggestions? Please leave your comments below.