How do you know if you are over-doing it with the tweets…?

The story of Australian Jade Ruthven, and the letter she received from her ‘friends’ regarding her supposed over-posting of her tiny daughter’s progress on Facebook saw many people pose the question, can you really post too much on social media? Where is the cut-off point, if there is one? Who decides when it is too much?

The context

Jade Ruthven’s case is a personal one, as opposed to business which is what we address in this article but the letter she received, a copy of which subsequently went viral across the globe, produced a riot of opinions. Interestingly, they all seemed in favour of Ms. Ruthven but the crux of the matter was this – is it possible to post too much and give your audience too much of a good thing? Certainly friends of Ms. Ruthven seem to think so.

How much is too much, in relation to your business and sharing information, news, articles and general updates on social media?

How long is a piece of string?

There are so many questions, so many variables and factors that it can seem almost impossible to answer such a question. No doubt someone, somewhere is working on a magic equation right now but, until that magic formula drops in your inbox, we have scoured the Internet and come up with 5 indicators that you are tweeting and posting just about the right amount of times, not too much and not too little.

Indicator 1: REACTION

OK, you post a tweet, update your status and hit the send button… then you do it again… and then again but it may be that this is not actually doing your business much good.

The question you need to be asking is how is the audience reacting to your tweets etc.? Are you tweets and updates echoing, or just shouting out the once?

What you are looking for are re-tweets, shares, likes, favourites, pins and such like, all indicators that your audience is with you, reading you and understanding you?

If this isn’t happening…

… your followers are either jaded, with an over-kill of tweets and posts or, you are talking to the wrong people.

Indicator 2: the number of followers is growing steadily…

… and naturally. All too often, you will see accounts pop up that tell you for “$5 you can have 30,000 new followers within 24 hours” or other ludicrous claims. Think quality, rather than quantity.

If your content is spammy and overdone, people stop following. If you don’t tweet or update, people will stop following but, if they like what you do, they will share and re-tweet; their followers will see it and from those followers you may get a handful of people following you.

It is the way that social media works; the clue is in the name – “social”. Be social and appropriate and people will follow you. Your audience needs to grow naturally, and not be forced with sill $5 offers.

Indicator 3: the RIGHT people are responding

This is where you are effectively asking for a favour or two from the high flyers in your industry. A great example is a fledgling furniture company with a unique product – creating furniture from old wine barrels. They tweet, including the high flyers such as @Kevin_McCloud and he re-tweets etc. and the ball starts rolling.

You don’t have to look for just the famous celebrities, but well-known ‘icons’ within your line of business. Getting this type of response can create a much-needed reaction for your business.

Indicator 4: advertising vs. conversation

There is no right or wrong when it comes to how you use social media in terms of advertising and/or conversation with employees, but the response you get – and how you subsequently respond – will vary… or it should.

Some businesses do use their Twitter feed, for example, as an advertising or marketing space; in this, overdo it with hundreds of tweets a day gets a bit boring, hence people stop following.

However, if you are indulging in conversation with clients, customers and fans, then you can get away with tweeting or posting more. However, unless you have the time, energy and person to tweet and post all of the time, you could possibly never get on with anything useful, ever again.

Indicator 5: what the dashboard says

For those with a serious nature behind their social media presence, it pays to tap into the power of platforms such as Hootsuite or BufferApp. The premium or business services of these platforms allows you to connect all your social media presence together in one place.

You can post the same thing across all your platforms, or lead a campaign on just one to up the followers and shares. Likewise, you can also see from various streams how well your accounts are doing and what real results you are reaping.

In fact, you can see forming before your very eyes your magic formula as to how many tweets and posts are too much, too little or just right.

What do you think is the optimum number of tweets for a business to send in a day? What about other social media platforms?

With the fallout from the Google Authorship and ‘is it a ploy to get us all using Google+?’ question still being bandied around, businesses can be easily confused as to which social media platform is the right one for them.

It can be tempting to be on everything but the problem with this blanket approach is that you may be using platforms that are not suitable and, keeping up to date with them all can be a timing nightmare.

In this article we look at Google+ or G+ and what it can offer you, as well as looking at arguably the most powerful and well-known of social media platforms, Facebook.

Things are changing

Facebook is the ‘daddy of ‘em all’, with a reach that is phenomenal it has, for many years, held the top notch position; it was and still is, the social media platform you must be on. If you wanted to reach out to the largest audience ever, then FB was the place to be.

But things change and on the world of online sharing. Once the poor relation, is seems that the ugly duckling is blossoming into the beautiful swan; 2014 has marked the best year for G+ yet, with its monthly active users reaching 540 million across the globe.

The difference between the two? G+ allows people to search for your business and is obviously geared towards this end of the market, whereas Facebook is more ‘personal’ in its approach but there are reasons why both could be useful, if not essential.

Circles

Some people think that circles on G+ are complicated but they are far from that. It’s a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff if you like and rather than being bombarded with every single post or share, you can group people together, choosing what you see and when.

Facebook has a similar set up now with Edgerank, the algorithm it introduced in December 2013. Rather than users being bombarded with items or posts they may find irrelevant, this algorithm sorts what it thinks the user will like. The only problem with this is that you don’t control it – unlike the G+ circles which you set up – the algorithm checks what you have been looking at and makes the decision for you.

Reach

On Facebook, any posts or statuses you make will need to reach a certain level of ‘likes’ over a set number of times before it is available to the masses, hence the almost begging Tweets and messages from businesses imploring you to like them on Facebook.

BUT, if this doesn’t work, you can always pay for the privilege with various adverts to boost your appearance and views on the platform. But, some say that this is losing sight of its original intention as small businesses may not have the budgeting resources to play alongside the big players.

The algorithm

Facebook’s algorithm is a double-edged sword; on one hand it has a positive impact but recent bad press from experiments such as the ‘emotion experiment’ has made some people question the platform and its integrity.

However, you cannot throw away 1.32 billion users around the world lightly and so, by improving your Facebook posts, from asking questions to running competitions, you do have an excellent way, at your fingertips of attracting new people and customers to your business.

Is it just about numbers?

Reaching the masses is great but, if only a small percentage buy your product or service, is it worth it for a local, online business?

No sale is a bad sale, and so if it reaps the smallest reward then that is not to be sniffed at but if it comes at a cost in terms of both time and money, it may be worth a re-think.

A G+ ‘hangout’ is as some people say, an awesome resource that allows businesses and customers to connect. Think of it as a modern-day equivalent of consumer research and with G+ and Google being the same, you are sending out some strong signals to the most popular search engine.

So, who to choose?

Internet trends change from week to week; it would be sheer folly to predict today what will be right next week or the week after and so on. However, the rub is that, as a business you need to connect to a wide an audience as possible, but balance it against time spent ‘doing’ social media and the return it gives you.

The answer is this – place the same post across the social media platforms you currently use and see where you get the most responses; do this a few times at different times of the year and it gives you an indication of where your audience is at.

Once you feel you know which platforms are right for your business, put time and energy into creating a plan so that you have something to offer customers and something to talk about over both G+ and Facebook – and any others too!

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