Last month I touched on building a network to help you cross-promote your online activity. Having readers market your business via their social media channels is one of the cornerstones of a successful social media campaign. One strategy to engage your social media followers is the 80/20 rule. The premise is simple, use 20 percent of your postings to promote your brand and devote 80 percent to content that interests your audience and encourage them to engage with you.
Creating post after post about your brand and your specials only annoys your fans. Your content strategy should be about building a relationship with your followers. Following the 80/20 rule will:
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Relieve the burden of creating new content every day. Just share an interesting article you find while browsing.
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Build your network and expand your reach by engaging in similar businesses by sharing their content.
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Diversify your content avoiding the pitfalls of promoting your brand post after post.
How to share 80% of your space with interesting content.
Here’s the crux of the matter. You must read A LOT to fill up your social media feeds with content. Start small, identify five blogs you really like and start following them. Actually read their articles and social media posts. If you like the article, post about it on your wall. Interact with the blog/authors in social media by sharing and re-Tweeting their posts. When sharing something with your readers be sure to impart your own thoughts and tag people!!
This post in my Google+ stream is the perfect example.
You need to be thinking about your customer when sharing content. Will this post really be interesting to them? Discovering what they like to read and what they find interesting will help you build an engaging dynamic online brand, that has a loyal community of followers.
