Social media is basically just a bunch of people screaming. With people who are outraged over various things, marketing posts, public relations efforts, and new announcements about whatever new product, it all amounts to a whole lot of noise, and if your social media marketing strategy is just to add your brand to that cacophony, it can be difficult to stand out.
Everyone is making videos. Everyone is creating and deploying well-written, informative, long-form blog content. And while these things are part of a well-developed social strategy, they aren’t always the content that performs best. One example that I saw recently that speaks to this was a post from the social media manager for Indiana University Bloomington. In the Facebook group “#HigherEdSocial” she shared an instance of when all she had to do was post one letter and it severely outperformed all of the highly produced content that the marketing team had worked so hard to develop.
This isn’t to say that every post should only be one letter, as it’s the other content that makes the one letter so special.
I like to think of social posts as “broccoli” and “candy.” Working in the world of higher education social media, there’s a fair amount of boring, informative broccoli-type information that you have to share in addition to the more fun candy posts. When you have the opportunity to post something that’s going to be fun and engaging, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an edited paragraph filled with flowery language and inspiring quotes, sometimes, it can just be “W.”
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