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A topic I frequently speak about “Free dogs, free beer, and social media” was recently featured in a new book. Kristin Magette published “Embracing Social Media” which covers practical practices for (mostly) the K-12 schools across the world where she applies her trade professionally.

Kristin and I met at a Social:IRL presentation I gave in Lawrence, Kansas where I discussed the beer and dogs topic. More information on that topic is available here. The gist of it is that to be truly successful with social media – no matter your goals – you will have to put money in the game.

HT to @kmagette on publishing your #SocialMedia book for #K12 http://t.co/NDXWcIMz3D Page 59 rocks! pic.twitter.com/o0TvAjEuaP

— Gus Wagner (@RocketGroup) January 28, 2015

The reasons why were important when Kristin heard me give that speech and are even more important now:

Organic reach: I know it still shocks some users to learn that at no time in history has every one of your fans seen one of your posts. Today, the organic reach of posts across all platforms is somewhere around 5{628954cb2bad821921117287c23504a7919be1893c483613421612ad8712cddb}. This means if you have 100 fans odds are that only 5 of them will see the post if you don’t apply strategy or money to get more attention.

Commitment: Businesses, organizations, and nonprofits of all sizes still refuse to accept that social media is a 24/7/365 effort. Throwing random posts up at 2 PM or 1 AM will not do anything for you if your audience isn’t online. Strategically scheduling or boosting your posts can help but if you really want to reach more of your fans – or people like them who don’t know you – you will need to invest money.

Rich audience: We don’t mean fans with deep pockets but the audience who is most likely to interact with your content (#ShareThenLike). These “super fans” need to see your most important content. Their frequent interaction will help you to reach them but if you want to be sure then you need to advertise to them.

The best. Social media advertising is the most manageable, targetable, and affordable form of marketing on the planet. You pick who you want to target, how much you want to spend, and control the gas and brake to speed up or stop your campaign. Any brand (that is you) worth its salt has already found this out.

TWEET THIS: Social media advertising is the most manageable, targetable, and affordable form of marketing on the planet.

Action items

• Stop complaining (if you are) that no one sees your posts or tweets. They aren’t reading your press releases in the newspaper either. Create engaging content and create room in your budget to have social media advertising as part of your marketing mix.
• Buy Kristen’s book. Especially if you are in the education world. You will thank her (and me) when you do so!
• Try out a Facebook or Twitter ad. Throw $5 behind a message which is getting good traction for you and let me know the results. If you need help figuring it all out, contact me for that as well!

You may also be interested in these posts:

Get Found on Facebook: A strategy for businesses

On Facebook do what works

A basic strategy we use for client success on social media

• Go to Twitter.com and sign up for an accountn
• Don’t follow any of the recommended accounts until you have your profile establishedn
• Be sure to upload a representative and professional image for your avatar/profile picturen
• Be sure to upload another representative and professional image for your cover imagen
• Be sure to include a bio that answers all as many questions about who you are, what you do, and where you do it as possible. Example: see oursn
• When all of that is done, send a few introductory tweets before you start following anyone so you have some groundwork laid for your first impressionsn
• Be sure to use popular hashtags for your local geographic area, profession, and interests so you will be found and followed by othersn
• Use lists to help control the sometimes overwhelming amounts of information.n
• Start tweeting, following, and thanking your followers for following you.n
• Have fun!

There have been times when my content sucked, and my audience reach plummeted, so I can relate when someone asks me, “Why aren’t people interacting with my content?”

The struggle to keep audiences engaged is one we understand firsthand, but when you ask us why people aren’t interacting with your stuff, you might not like the answer. I hate to be so brutal about this, but the painful truth (that all of us have experienced) is basically that your content sucks.

If you not sure if you content sucks, check out this post we wrote, called “3 Reasons People Aren’t Interacting With Your Content.” If you’re sharing spammy links, if you’re always selling to your audiences, or if your content is ugly, then your content sucks, and your interaction probably isn’t what you want it to be.

So what can you do to make your content better?

Answer the question “What’s in it for me?”

The most important way you can improve your content marketing is by asking yourself the question “What’s in it for me?”

The catch is that the “me” in this case isn’t you; it’s your audience. You need to ask yourself what value or benefit your content offers them. What’s in it for your audience if they click on your link, look at your content, or otherwise engage with what you’re putting out there? Is your audience going to get value or benefit from what you’ve shared?

If you see your number shrink, chances are good that you’re not informing or educating or entertaining your audiences. Whether it’s your blog, your website, or your social media, you’ve got to ask yourself what’s “in it” for your audience.

Improve Your Facebook Content

If your content is on Facebook, you need to be aware that there’ve been a lot of algorithm changes lately that have caused dramatic decreases in the organic reach of posts. This post has some solid tips in it for beating Facebook at the algorithm game.

Where Facebook content is concerned, there’s a valuable tool that you probably aren’t paying attention to; Facebook Insights. It’s amazing to us how often, when we ask people if they’ve looked at their Insights, they say “What’s that?”

Your Facebook Insights are all the numbers above your cover image when you’re logged in as an admin on your Facebook page. Click those links: All the information you need about your audiences — and about what content they’ve engaged with — is right there.

Give Your Content a Facelift

When I wrote the 3 Reasons post, I mentioned that ugly content is one of the reasons people won’t interact with you online. If people are turned off by your graphics, photos, fonts, or color palates, they’re a lot less likely to interact with what you share.

Here are a few of the tools I’ve had good luck using to make our content look great:

PicMonkey is a photo-editing tool that I think of as an Instagram for my desktop. It’s easy to use, and it works great. The free version is great, or you can pay for an upgraded version that has extra bells and whistles.

Canva is great for creating graphics. You can include photos, call-outs, and other graphic elements into great-looking images for your website, blog, or social content. We use Canva almost every day.

Getty has provided beautiful content for generations, and it’s recently opened up a lot of its creative gallery to the public for free use. Go to Getty Images and look for the Embed Images section for free, powerful photographs you can embed into your website or blog.

You’ve got the same Internet that I do, and you can find these tools (and others) yourself. These tools and this advice on audience interaction aren’t trade secrets. If you need some help, give us a call or shoot us a message. Let’s talk!

Tools mentioned in this post:

PicMonkey

Canva

Getty Images

Facebook Advertising

Twitter Advertising

Did your mom have you clean the house all the time in case “company dropped by” and she wanted to make a good impression? The Facebook page of your business, organization, or non-profit should be treated the same way even though very few are ever going to come by and see it.

99.9{628954cb2bad821921117287c23504a7919be1893c483613421612ad8712cddb} of people will never return to your Facebook page once they have Liked it.

Think about how you use Facebook: you (most likely) scroll through your newsfeed until something from a friend, family member, or brand page catches your eye and you stop. You then move further down the newsfeed or to another site if you clicked a link in whatever caught your eye.

You may have liked Coca-Cola, Chevrolet, or even The Rocket Group, on Facebook but unless you see compelling content from them in your newsfeed you most likely are not going to go to their page directly to see what is up.

The same is true of your fans. If they do not see you in the newsfeed, then they are not thinking, Liking, Sharing, or commenting about your company, organization, or non-profit.

This is why you have to post to Facebook. And post to Facebook. And post to Facebook.

Actually, this is why you should have a plan and strategy in place for what your business, organization, or non-profit is going to post to Facebook. Posting for the sake of posting will only get you so far. If your content is not relevant to your fans, is not connected to your general mission, or is just junk (think cat pictures when you have nothing to do with cats), you are not going to move anyone to interact with you on Facebook or to do business with you in the real world.

What you should be posting to Facebook

You will see and hear a continuing theme of “Educate, Inform, and Entertain” in our words, pictures, and videos here on this site and on our social media channels. Our goal with all of our content it to fit one of those three keywords. If our content isn’t teaching you something you did not know, informing you of an opportunity, or at the very least making you smile and think, we have let you down. We recommend you do the same with your content for your audience.

What else should you be doing to clean up your Facebook page?

• Go to the “About” section and answer as many of the questions as possible. This will help any newcomers to learn more about you…including your parking situation!
• Make sure your profile and cover images are readable, to size, and representative of your business. Need help with your sizes and ideas? Use a mostly-free tool like Canva to easily guide you through the process.
• You should also make plans at least once a week – at a minimum – to go on Facebook as your brand page. Scroll your pages newsfeed and Like, comment, and Share with the pages you are connected to as your brand. Don’t Like any pages as your brand? What the heck are you waiting for?

Doing these simple things will help you create a good, nay, great first impression to new company or that 1{628954cb2bad821921117287c23504a7919be1893c483613421612ad8712cddb} or so that may come by to check up on you. Also, all the moms will be proud of you!

Got any questions? Feel free to ask in the comments below or connect with us on our social media channels anytime!

Online content can take a lot of forms, from words to photos to videos. And content can live in a lot of different places: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, blogs, websites, etc. Regardless of the kind of content you create or where you post it, if engagement is low, you’re probably doing something wrong.

One of the questions that comes up over and over again in emails, comments, and messages to us is, “Why aren’t people interacting with my content?”

To answer that question, let’s look at three reasons people aren’t interacting with your content:

1. Your Content is All About Links

We see this on Facebook all the time: businesses, organizations, or nonprofits drop links into their Facebook feeds using Facebook’s auto-link feature. That feature is being downgraded in the Facebook algorithm, so you don’t want to keep “just posting links” there.

You also want to avoid spamming your audiences with links that aren’t relevant to your business. Putting a bunch of silly Buzzfeed-type nonsense out there bring you less success in the new Facebook algorithm than it did in the past. And it probably wasn’t bringing much return for you then.

Bottom line: If you’re posting a lot of lists, quizzes, and other spammy, link-driven contents on social media, you’re ensuring that people will ignore your content.

2. You Sell All the Time

Who likes following a business, organization, or non-profit who sells 24/7? Businesses, nonprofits, and organizations that are always selling on social media are forgetting one of the most important questions in content marketing: What’s in it for the customer/reader?

It’s easy to use social media to push sales all the time, but if you do, your engagement will most likely fall. Try using the 80/10/10 rule: 80{628954cb2bad821921117287c23504a7919be1893c483613421612ad8712cddb} of your content is educational, 10{628954cb2bad821921117287c23504a7919be1893c483613421612ad8712cddb} is informational, and 10{628954cb2bad821921117287c23504a7919be1893c483613421612ad8712cddb} is sales.

3. Your Content is Ugly

Whether it’s bad photos, bad graphics, or hard-to-read fonts, ugly content doesn’t get interaction. Even if you’ve got huge news to share, a killer offer to advertize, or something else of value — if your content looks ugly, people aren’t going to pay attention to it.

We wrote about three great online tools you can use to make your content more attractive in this post.

We all suffer from content suck sometimes. We’ve gone through times right here at The Rocket Group where our content was bad, and we lost followers. If your business, organization, or nonprofit is over-doing it on links, focusing too much on sales, or using ugly imagery, the good news is that it’s not too late to bounce back.

Sharing quality (not spammy) content, following the 80/10/10 rule, and making your content a little more attractive can help you drive increased content interaction. If you need a little more help, give us a shout! We’re always glad to help.

Tools We Use and Recommend:

PicMonkey

Canva

Getty Images

Facebook Advertising

Twitter Advertising

As I explain in the video above our creation, The Law of Uncle Ben, it is the responsibility of those of us with the experience, education, and success stories in modern communications – especially social media – to help those individuals, businesses, organizations, non-profits, who do not have the same experience, education, and success stories to succeed in modern communications.

To that goal, we announce The Month of Uncle Ben where I, personally, will offer thirty-one communications audits to those who sign up for the program throughout the month of January, 2015. The audit can cover your social media, your website, your email newsletter, your audiences, and your goals. These half-hour conversations will be conducted over the phone or Google hangout and be recorded for your later use and reference.

Did I mention they will be free?

Yep, a free thirty-minute communications audit with myself to help get you on the right path to launching your own success story in 2015.

We’re going to learn from you what is working and not working with your communications and offer constructive criticisms, powerful suggestions, and recommendations of tools – free and low cost – which will make your life easier and your success story easier to attain. We will use our experience to help you, there will not be any upsell of our products and services, and there will be no charge for these audits.

Let’s put the Law of Uncle Ben to work for you and your social media communications in 2015! Claim your thirty minute appointment with the link below.

PS  

Be sure to connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, and on our News page to get dozens of helpful updates about social media, marketing, and communications (and some fun stuff too!) which we post every week. Also, check out our daily “Proof of Life” #UncleBen-related posts which we rotate between Instagram and Facebook!