8 ms·

Disagree. The very best digital/social marketers don't use these tools at all. Each channel has its own platform strengths, weaknesses, peculiarities, not to me

by erdojo 10y ago

Disagree. The very best digital/social marketers don't use these tools at all. Each channel has its own platform strengths, weaknesses, peculiarities, not to mention audience differences, trends, breaking news etc. If you're scheduling social posts without doing your due diligence on each and every platform within 2-4 hours of a post going live (preferably within 30 minutes before), you're doing it wrong. If you're using the same post across multiple channels, you're doing it wrong. If you're re-using the same post multiple times within a few weeks, you're doing it wrong. The only people I give a free pass too are solo marketers who really just don't have time to do things right and have to keep up a minimum level of noise on social.

ThePhysicist 10y ago
Interesting, can you elaborate a bit more on this? Especially on the "due diligence" part: Do you mean depending on what happened on the network a few hours ago it's often wise to change stories or content?
- mhoad 10y ago
  The wisdom in the marketing world when it comes to social media is that if you treat it purely as a self-promotional channel it will fail. If you come across as fake, overly corporate or robotic it will also fail. So due diligence in this scenario means if you are hoping to just load up a bunch of tweets for example, have them blast out are pre-defined intervals and think that is good enough you are in for a rude shock. You should instead be monitoring it to see what the reaction is and if there are any conversations that you should be a part of based on what you have shared. You need to come across as a real person who is sharing something that you genuinely feel people are going to find useful if you want to have any kind of real "success" with social.
- erdojo 10y ago
  By due diligence I mean not only understanding each platform and how its audience differs, but understanding what's happening around the time that you post. What's the mood? There's a huge amount of value to be gained by participating in a larger conversation at any given moment (thinking mostly of Twitter here). It's not about just jumping on hashtags or Trends, though if relevant that's an opportunity. But if everyone is talking about a big topic, then customizing a post to add value to the conversation can have huge benefits. Or just interacting on a human level. I've seen my best gains and actual new customers when participating in hashtag chats for my industry. Not selling my product, just trading ideas and opinions. That's how we met some great influencers who have ended up being major magnifiers of our messaging. Also evaluating the overall tone on a social channel. Did your last post on FB a few hours ago result in a bunch of snarking by readers? Then maybe a humble tone is in order. It's also about knowing when not to post. An earthquake kills 25,000 people in the Yucatan? Your fluffy happy emoji-laden post looks really out of touch. Anyways, I just think it's very hard to pre-schedule content that's truly relevant. So instead, as someone mentioned above, people spray and pray with a mix of product/feature advertorials and rarely-clever memes. Noise.
  - jfoutz 10y ago
    Wendy's twitter I think is a funny, good example. I don't often eat there. I'm sure the exposure influences me in subtle ways.
Yabood 10y ago
Right. I agree with most of what you said. However, that doesn't mean you can't build a platform that does what you described. In fact, and I'm not trying to self-promote here, but we've already done that. We're currently in beta going live in a couple of months. > "If you're scheduling social posts without doing your due diligence on each and every platform within 2-4 hours of a post going live (preferably within 30 minutes before), you're doing it wrong." Can you elaborate on this? What type of due diligence do you need? > "If you're using the same post across multiple channels, you're doing it wrong." Some posts can be shared as they are across multiple networks, other posts need to be different. We address this by allowing the user to write the post once and customized it for each network before its published. This includes different images, different URLs, different OG tags, keywords, mentions, etc. > "If you're re-using the same post multiple times within a few weeks, you're doing it wrong." When you publish something, only a percentage of your audience sees it, which is why it is considered a good strategy to repost every now and then for higher exposure. Just don't do it every few weeks. The way we solved this problem is by allowing the user to create category-based schedules. Basically, we have a content library that organizes posts by categories, and each category can have one or multiple publishing schedules. You can choose to recycle content from specific categories or not, up to you. The more content you have in each recyclable category the less frequent your content will be reposted. There are many other hard problems that SMM platforms can help you solve including social listening, which if done manually can be very time consuming and silly. EDIT: typo
- krmmalik 10y ago
  Would love to see what you're working on. I always repurpose my content for each social network. Its time consuming. Would love something that can make that easier.
solatic 10y ago
> If you're not the very best, then you're doing it wrong Well, more a paraphrase than a direct quote, but still. Most companies can't afford to hire the very best. Many companies take a bang-for-the-buck approach, and products like Buffer hit that measure for them better compared to paying much more for a world-class marketing team. Doesn't mean it's a bad product. Just means you're not the customer.
- withdavidli 10y ago
  This. Most people by definition are not the very best. Not everyone is a Gary Vaynerchuck. Most mediocre people we would think suck. Really look at the 50 percentile. Ever interview people with long careers, making decent/good pay, at well known companies, and wonder how in the world they even have a job? That is a an extreme example, but most people treat it like a job, something to get done, provide for themselves and family. That's okay, but they're not that dedicated in being the very best.
  - adriand 10y ago
    The very best at what, though? If they have a family, perhaps they're a dad. If they're the best at social media, they're not the best at being a dad. In fact, they probably suck at being a dad. I think that to be the best, you have to choose one thing, and be okay with being shitty at all the other things you didn't choose. A lot of people who I respect decided that they wanted to be just be pretty good at everything.
    - withdavidli 10y ago
      This thread was about social media, but can apply to many things. The point of contention I have is the original assumption of why a product is near worthless because it doesn't matter to the best people in the field which the product is marketed towards. Not sure how you're interpreting my comment. It isn't to knock people with other priorities like a family. In fact that's perfectly fine and expected. I used it as an example of why people might not be the best in their field. Your description of the trade off supports that claim, and it's a fine trade off to make as work isn't and arguably shouldn't be the center of ones life. So I don't think we disagree on anything.
freehunter 10y ago
I'm far from the best social media marketer and maybe that explains what I'm about to say, but I can't figure out for the life of me how to effectively use tools like Buffer. I manage Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for my small brand, and the three places are so different, with different audiences and different methods of interaction, that trying to do it in one tool is crazy. I end up writing the same post three times in three different ways anyway, so opening the Facebook app or Twitter app is the least of my concerns. If usernames and hashtags were the same across the different platforms, it might work. But what you should say on Facebook won't translate to Instagram or Twitter so what's the point?
- TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
  I have been in the same boat for my baking website. Used Buffer and didn't see that many results. Then I abandoned Buffer and came up with a strategy that worked for me. I realize that twitter was a place where I could get a lot of conversions to the website, but not the greatest for engagement. So I created twitter bot using the Wordpress REST API [1] to just pump out links to my recipes. Instagram, on the other hand, is all hand written and takes me some time. Although instagram barely gets anyone too my website, it has been the best tool for me to build a community around. So much so that I am thinking of abandoning the website. I can't figure out Facebook for the life of me... [1]: https://github.com/kylevalenzuela/python-wordpress-twitter-bot https://github.com/kylevalenzuela/python-wordpress-twitter-b...
  - freehunter 10y ago
    I'm pretty similar. I let Wordpress push my new posts to Twitter and that's about it. No one engages, no one comments, they just click through to my site. Sometimes I use Twitter to talk to other related businesses, but real actual people don't interact with me there. Instagram, I get real actual people reacting, but there's no good way to drive people directly to my site from Instagram. I use it more to engage with the audience and not to drive clicks. I held off on using Facebook for the longest time, but I've had more engagement there than anywhere else. At this point, 90% of my clicks come from Facebook, and about that much of the social media engagement too. My secret? I have a $1/day ad sitting out there generating about 20 likes per week. Once I hit 500-600 likes from the ad, it because self-sustaining. Enough people would engage with posts that their friends would see it and like or follow as well. Sucks that I had to pay to see any benefit, but I paid Twitter and Instagram too and didn't get squat from it.
nedwin 10y ago
I think you're giving too much credit to the majority of digital/social marketers. Yes, the best will follow similar strategies that you outlined but the vast majority will continue to spray and pray, with perhaps additional focus and time given to the one channel that performs the best.
rythie 10y ago
More than half of all the businesses have no employees (i.e. It's just the founder) and most of the rest have less than 50 employees. For most companies is social one of many things that they need to do, setup a website, pay taxes, answer the phone, emails etc. because they're is no one else. Whilst for big companies, they perhaps have full time social media or at least communications staff, most companies do not. Ultimately this is a tool that saves time for, mostly, small companies.
- samtoday 10y ago
  > More than half of all the businesses have no employees That sounds very interesting. What do you mean by "the businesses"? Where are these stats from?
  - rythie 10y ago
    I used these stats http://www.npi.org.uk/visualisations/rise-companies-no-employees/ http://www.npi.org.uk/visualisations/rise-companies-no-emplo.... Also, this backs it up for US businesses http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/09/09/16-surprising-statistics-about-small-businesses/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/09/09/16-surpris...
ericb 10y ago
What is the due diligence? Why are these things wrong? Are there sources you can point me to understand your point of view better and educate myself.

by erdojo 10y ago

ThePhysicist 10y ago

Interesting, can you elaborate a bit more on this? Especially on the "due diligence" part: Do you mean depending on what happened on the network a few hours ago it's often wise to change stories or content?

mhoad 10y ago
The wisdom in the marketing world when it comes to social media is that if you treat it purely as a self-promotional channel it will fail. If you come across as fake, overly corporate or robotic it will also fail. So due diligence in this scenario means if you are hoping to just load up a bunch of tweets for example, have them blast out are pre-defined intervals and think that is good enough you are in for a rude shock. You should instead be monitoring it to see what the reaction is and if there are any conversations that you should be a part of based on what you have shared. You need to come across as a real person who is sharing something that you genuinely feel people are going to find useful if you want to have any kind of real "success" with social.
erdojo 10y ago
By due diligence I mean not only understanding each platform and how its audience differs, but understanding what's happening around the time that you post. What's the mood? There's a huge amount of value to be gained by participating in a larger conversation at any given moment (thinking mostly of Twitter here). It's not about just jumping on hashtags or Trends, though if relevant that's an opportunity. But if everyone is talking about a big topic, then customizing a post to add value to the conversation can have huge benefits. Or just interacting on a human level. I've seen my best gains and actual new customers when participating in hashtag chats for my industry. Not selling my product, just trading ideas and opinions. That's how we met some great influencers who have ended up being major magnifiers of our messaging. Also evaluating the overall tone on a social channel. Did your last post on FB a few hours ago result in a bunch of snarking by readers? Then maybe a humble tone is in order. It's also about knowing when not to post. An earthquake kills 25,000 people in the Yucatan? Your fluffy happy emoji-laden post looks really out of touch. Anyways, I just think it's very hard to pre-schedule content that's truly relevant. So instead, as someone mentioned above, people spray and pray with a mix of product/feature advertorials and rarely-clever memes. Noise.
- jfoutz 10y ago
  Wendy's twitter I think is a funny, good example. I don't often eat there. I'm sure the exposure influences me in subtle ways.

Yabood 10y ago

Right. I agree with most of what you said. However, that doesn't mean you can't build a platform that does what you described. In fact, and I'm not trying to self-promote here, but we've already done that. We're currently in beta going live in a couple of months. > "If you're scheduling social posts without doing your due diligence on each and every platform within 2-4 hours of a post going live (preferably within 30 minutes before), you're doing it wrong." Can you elaborate on this? What type of due diligence do you need? > "If you're using the same post across multiple channels, you're doing it wrong." Some posts can be shared as they are across multiple networks, other posts need to be different. We address this by allowing the user to write the post once and customized it for each network before its published. This includes different images, different URLs, different OG tags, keywords, mentions, etc. > "If you're re-using the same post multiple times within a few weeks, you're doing it wrong." When you publish something, only a percentage of your audience sees it, which is why it is considered a good strategy to repost every now and then for higher exposure. Just don't do it every few weeks. The way we solved this problem is by allowing the user to create category-based schedules. Basically, we have a content library that organizes posts by categories, and each category can have one or multiple publishing schedules. You can choose to recycle content from specific categories or not, up to you. The more content you have in each recyclable category the less frequent your content will be reposted. There are many other hard problems that SMM platforms can help you solve including social listening, which if done manually can be very time consuming and silly. EDIT: typo

krmmalik 10y ago
Would love to see what you're working on. I always repurpose my content for each social network. Its time consuming. Would love something that can make that easier.

solatic 10y ago

> If you're not the very best, then you're doing it wrong Well, more a paraphrase than a direct quote, but still. Most companies can't afford to hire the very best. Many companies take a bang-for-the-buck approach, and products like Buffer hit that measure for them better compared to paying much more for a world-class marketing team. Doesn't mean it's a bad product. Just means you're not the customer.

withdavidli 10y ago
This. Most people by definition are not the very best. Not everyone is a Gary Vaynerchuck. Most mediocre people we would think suck. Really look at the 50 percentile. Ever interview people with long careers, making decent/good pay, at well known companies, and wonder how in the world they even have a job? That is a an extreme example, but most people treat it like a job, something to get done, provide for themselves and family. That's okay, but they're not that dedicated in being the very best.
- adriand 10y ago
  The very best at what, though? If they have a family, perhaps they're a dad. If they're the best at social media, they're not the best at being a dad. In fact, they probably suck at being a dad. I think that to be the best, you have to choose one thing, and be okay with being shitty at all the other things you didn't choose. A lot of people who I respect decided that they wanted to be just be pretty good at everything.
  - withdavidli 10y ago
    This thread was about social media, but can apply to many things. The point of contention I have is the original assumption of why a product is near worthless because it doesn't matter to the best people in the field which the product is marketed towards. Not sure how you're interpreting my comment. It isn't to knock people with other priorities like a family. In fact that's perfectly fine and expected. I used it as an example of why people might not be the best in their field. Your description of the trade off supports that claim, and it's a fine trade off to make as work isn't and arguably shouldn't be the center of ones life. So I don't think we disagree on anything.

freehunter 10y ago

I'm far from the best social media marketer and maybe that explains what I'm about to say, but I can't figure out for the life of me how to effectively use tools like Buffer. I manage Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for my small brand, and the three places are so different, with different audiences and different methods of interaction, that trying to do it in one tool is crazy. I end up writing the same post three times in three different ways anyway, so opening the Facebook app or Twitter app is the least of my concerns. If usernames and hashtags were the same across the different platforms, it might work. But what you should say on Facebook won't translate to Instagram or Twitter so what's the point?

TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
I have been in the same boat for my baking website. Used Buffer and didn't see that many results. Then I abandoned Buffer and came up with a strategy that worked for me. I realize that twitter was a place where I could get a lot of conversions to the website, but not the greatest for engagement. So I created twitter bot using the Wordpress REST API [1] to just pump out links to my recipes. Instagram, on the other hand, is all hand written and takes me some time. Although instagram barely gets anyone too my website, it has been the best tool for me to build a community around. So much so that I am thinking of abandoning the website. I can't figure out Facebook for the life of me... [1]: https://github.com/kylevalenzuela/python-wordpress-twitter-bot https://github.com/kylevalenzuela/python-wordpress-twitter-b...
- freehunter 10y ago
  I'm pretty similar. I let Wordpress push my new posts to Twitter and that's about it. No one engages, no one comments, they just click through to my site. Sometimes I use Twitter to talk to other related businesses, but real actual people don't interact with me there. Instagram, I get real actual people reacting, but there's no good way to drive people directly to my site from Instagram. I use it more to engage with the audience and not to drive clicks. I held off on using Facebook for the longest time, but I've had more engagement there than anywhere else. At this point, 90% of my clicks come from Facebook, and about that much of the social media engagement too. My secret? I have a $1/day ad sitting out there generating about 20 likes per week. Once I hit 500-600 likes from the ad, it because self-sustaining. Enough people would engage with posts that their friends would see it and like or follow as well. Sucks that I had to pay to see any benefit, but I paid Twitter and Instagram too and didn't get squat from it.

nedwin 10y ago

I think you're giving too much credit to the majority of digital/social marketers. Yes, the best will follow similar strategies that you outlined but the vast majority will continue to spray and pray, with perhaps additional focus and time given to the one channel that performs the best.

rythie 10y ago

More than half of all the businesses have no employees (i.e. It's just the founder) and most of the rest have less than 50 employees. For most companies is social one of many things that they need to do, setup a website, pay taxes, answer the phone, emails etc. because they're is no one else. Whilst for big companies, they perhaps have full time social media or at least communications staff, most companies do not. Ultimately this is a tool that saves time for, mostly, small companies.

samtoday 10y ago
> More than half of all the businesses have no employees That sounds very interesting. What do you mean by "the businesses"? Where are these stats from?
- rythie 10y ago
  I used these stats http://www.npi.org.uk/visualisations/rise-companies-no-employees/ http://www.npi.org.uk/visualisations/rise-companies-no-emplo.... Also, this backs it up for US businesses http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/09/09/16-surprising-statistics-about-small-businesses/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/09/09/16-surpris...

ericb 10y ago

What is the due diligence? Why are these things wrong? Are there sources you can point me to understand your point of view better and educate myself.