Last night I conducted a social media audit. The point of the audit was to better understand the current social media presence of a client that Ron and I recently signed. The new client’s major emphasis was Social Media. They wanted to be a part of the social media game, so naturally, I needed to see how all the competitors were doing. After looking through about 8 different companies and all of their social media accounts, it offered a nice reminder of what separates the good from the bad. That thing is consistency.
Picture this.
[While scrolling through a business’s YouTube channel.]
“Oh okay, so they uploaded a video last week. Cool, they are really on top of it.”
[Scroll a little lower.]
“Oh okay the last video before that was posted was 6 months ago…and it looks like they uploaded 20 videos that same day. O_____0”
“Maybe they just were excited that day.”
[Look a little further.]
“Oh okay before those 20 videos, they uploaded 8 months before that. This time they uploaded 31…”
I have to just ask. Why? If you had so many videos, why didn’t you just schedule them? Even if they were product demos you could do so much more than just uploading all at once. Quick thought, make each week a certain theme. This week is everything about cups! Upload the video. Coordinate through your Facebook and Twitter. Make it an event.
Don’t Confuse Consistency with Quantity
Now, remember consistency is all about cadence, not amount. So I’m not criticizing these businesses for not posting enough, no it’s far from that. Nobody likes someone who consistently posts 4-5 times a day on Facebook. We call people like that “soon to be muted”. What I am really saying is to be consistent.
When you start posting on your Facebook or Instagram, do you notice that you can’t keep up with a post every day? Then try to do it 2-3 times a week. If not do it once a week or even once a month. The point is to stay consistent with it.
How To Stay Consistent
Be reasonable. Feel your way through the whole social media process. There’ll be weeks where you are rolling and posting with relative ease every day. Then there will be a month where you cannot for the life of you think of anything. Understand the situation and reassess your schedule. Start dialing it back and readjust your anticipated social media schedule.
I’ll be completely honest, I have the same trouble that I’m writing about. Sometimes though you need to see other people make a mistake before you realize that maybe you’re making that mistake too. So lay out your calendar, think about what is realistic, and then stay consistent
