Developing A Social Media Content Strategy

by Matt Harty 

In an earlier post, I talked about the Holy Trinity of Social Media and User Generated Content (UGC). The first step in the responsible handling of UGC is Observation. An observation platform helps you see the UGC surrounding your brand. Without the right optics, you can’t see the threats or the opportunities in time to have a suitable effect on their outcome. 

When we observe UGC, we can see differing reactions to the stories posted. We need to make a decision whether the content is repeatable or not. Clearly some stories regardless of how big the buzz was you have no intention of rekindling. There are also a number of reasons that the content of the posts may not be repeatable, these range from vagueness to spreading the wrong message about the brand. 

If we feel that the content is repeatable then we next look to the reaction type to predict the value of the content to us. There are a number of differing types of social reactions that we can observe. These include blogs & articles linking to a piece of content, “Social Bookmarking” of the content or passing a URL in Twitter. 

The benefit to us varies based on the reaction type and our goals for the brand. This is partially where “Organic Search” (SEO) and UGC can co-exist. Where a link to your website URL has been passed in one of these social media transactions you see an SEO benefit in the form of a “Backlink”. 

Firstly, there are two types of posts we should focus on. One are our posts on your domain (press releases, blogs, etc) the other are stories written by others and not on your domain. The latter is less likely to create a direct backlink for SEO unless they carry a link to your domain. However links not contributing to SEO can still make up positive buzz around the brand. 

Where we have observed past positive social reactions to particular types of content and we feel it is repeatable, the next step is to produce content of our own in the same vein. 

The step after that is to distribute the content. I will cover distribution in a whole post of its own as it deserves to be treated as a topic in it own right. 

The final step is to monitor the reaction and see how your content was received in comparison to the similar content that you emulated. 

With an eye on what the mob will respond to, marketers can look for opportunities in the brand buzz to find areas of content that can be expanded on to further the objectives of their brand. I think this approach is far preferable to the random dissemination of brand information we often see now.