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What successful marketers are learning more and more is that social
media content must not only be carefully created, but also consciously
curated. Slapping just any old material on your site makes as much
sense as filling the walls of an art museum with a first-grader’s finger
paintings.
To be an effective and purposeful content crafter, you must post
content that is relevant, useful, and relatable to your target audience. It’s
critical to create content that can be adapted across all social media
channels and to develop a strategy that covers all areas of your busi-
ness needs: promotions, membership marketing, sales, HR, PR, and
corporate communications, among others. Your content should rein-
force the brand image you wish to convey.
This doesn’t mean constantly creating content, but rather tapping
into and repurposing content that already exists, pulling from your busi-
ness’s print and online publications, advertisements, customer testimo-
nials, as well as outside media.
Effective content — most importantly — provokes a response.
Successful social media is not about creating content that produces
followers — but rather telling the stories that inspire those follow-
ers to actually engage with your brand. Engagement is a truer
metric because it measures that you have the attention of your
followers. It’s better to have fewer followers with higher
engagement than a high number of followers of which few are
interacting with your brand.
From Entertainment to Participation
Engagement refers to the actions your fans and followers take
to interact with the stories your brand tells. This can be anything
from commenting on a Facebook status update to posting a
picture on your brand’s timeline, from sending a tweet to enter-
ing a contest.
In essence, acts of engagement help create a ripple
effect, spreading the word about your brand, and growing
your follower base. For example, when followers engage with
your brand on Facebook, it shows up on their newsfeed. Or
when you encourage someone to post their vacation picture,
you can count on the fact that the poster will share that image
with friends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances.
Getting followers to engage means they are interacting with
your content. This widens your audience reach, because the more
they interact, the more people will see it.
In the fast-paced world of social media, anything can “go viral,” both
quickly and unexpectedly. Someone’s toddler earns 15 minutes of fame
for his smooth dance moves, or the awkward teenager wows worldwide
followers with a pop ballad performed in her bedroom.
You can call it word-of-mouth, going viral, or extreme engagement,
it all means the same thing: Content gets shared, liked, curated, and
reposted. The payoff is earned social media, which is the same as
earned traditional media — often considered “free advertising.”
If your Facebook fans and Twitter followers have come to rely on
your updates for sharing interesting content, your brand becomes an
online influence or resource for them.
Ten Top Ideas for Engaging Content
While only the rare post will go viral, any business has the potential to be
an online influencer. As you develop your content strategy, look for and
RESORTDEVELOPER.COM
vacation industry review
JULY – SEPTEMBER 2015
Getting Engaged
How to Inspire a Loyal Relationship
From Your Social Media Followers
12
By Madeline Berges
SOCIAL MEDIA