Social media sharing guidelines

When you are busy with a social media campaign and you share content with your audience, do you have an editorial calendar and do you know who you will be sharing it with? Are you sharing your content with everyone or to a selected group that will find your content interesting with a better chance of resulting in an action?

Many experts in digital marketing will argue that you should really try to share your content with as many people possible. Even though in theory it will allow you to spread your message to a wider audience, in reality it doesn’t work. What will happen if everyone shared everything with everyone that they know on a selected social media channel? It will definitely create quite a lot of noise and no one will pay attention.

How can you make your sharing better on the social media channels you are using? Find a couple of guidelines that I use below.

Social media sharing tips

• If you are looking for information on a problem, involve many in your network.
• If you really want your “shared” information to be read and searchable, you really don’t need to cram it down everyone’s throats. Use it somewhere where it can be found.
• If the content you are going to share is not relevant to your target audience, think twice before sharing it. Do you want to be labelled as a spammer?
• Are you sharing valuable information or giving yourself credit for something you did? People are not particularly fond of other’s self promotion especially if they don’t know you that well.
• Not everyone likes replying and commenting in public view for everyone to see. Provide a scaled down safer place such as your blog where people can interact with you.
• What content do you like in your activity streams on your favorite social media channels? Don’t share updates/content that you don’t want displayed on your own activity stream.

There’s not a golden rule book for social media and many people stepping into the social web to promote either their business, services or products are making the same mistake of not sharing their updates and content to their target audience the right way. If you are new to social media, read the tips above and think twice before you start sharing away.

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