Mastering social media requires you to be social. This sounds like a bit of a no brainer but you’d be amazed how many of us aren’t actually social on social media. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are places that people visit to kill time and have fun. You need to take this into account when deciding what to post on your profiles. Users like to view photos, funny videos and inspirational quotes. Generally you will find just posting a link to your latest blog post won’t garner much attention or response.

Content Curation or Spam

If you don’t have a very active online business it can be hard to create quality posts on a regular basis. One way to get around this is to use a content curation app to help you find useful, share-worthy content. Take a look at our review of Oktopost which offers such a service. The problem I have found with this though is that we find ourselves back to the problem above…..just posting links to articles (this time even worse because we don’t see any of the traffic). Using a content curation service should be seen as a way of supplementing your social media profiles but the bulk of content should come from your own business.

The problem for most online marketers is that they simply don’t have anything interesting enough to share on a regular basis. Let’s be honest, most of us are sat in front of a computer screen all day and have little to report that is going to interest someone browsing Facebook on their lunch break.

Some Things Are Worth Sharing

Fortunately this isn’t true for every profession, there are many professions that are worthy of a share. For example you might be a fashion photographer, like Nicoline above, in which case you’re much more likely to have an interesting ‘behind the scenes’ shot you can share on social profiles. Sometimes it comes down to the unfortunate truth that social media just doesn’t work for your brand or your audience. There is nothing wrong with this, I know lots of people, myself included, who rarely use social media sites in their spare time. I’ve got better things to do.

As With Anything, Measure, Track and Analyse

If you are not seeing a positive ROI on your time spent managing and creating content for social media sites then don’t bother doing it. Concentrate on more important tasks such as replying to customer emails, creating content or learning a new skill. When you have these things in place, THEN you can think about a social media campaign or hiring someone to take care of your profiles for you. For most small business owners or bedroom marketers there’s too much other stuff to be getting on with.

To make things worse, social media sites such as Facebook are clamping down on organic reach and shifting more towards a pay per view model in which page owners have to pay to get their content seen by their fans. All-in-all it might just be a complete waste of time trying to become a social media mogul.

But don’t just take my word for it, lets take a look at some numbers, I’m going to pick 4 well known marketing blogs who are active on social media and see how their Facebook fan pages are performing. This is a basic test and we will compare the following:

1. How many fans they have.
2. How many likes their most recent 5 posts have received.
3. How many comments their most recent 5 posts have received.
4. Percentage of fans engaging in these posts.

Jeff Bullas

Fans – 32,354

Likes on most recent 5 posts (total) – 56
Comments on most recent 5 posts (total) – 0

Percentage of Fans Engagement – 0.17%

Jon Loomer

Fans – 74,349

Likes on most recent 5 posts (total) – 808
Comments on most recent 5 posts (total) – 93

Percentage of Fans Engagement – 1.21%

Social Media Examiner

Fans – 312,797

Likes on most recent 5 posts (total) – 310
Comments on most recent 5 posts (total) – 7

Percentage of Fans Engagement – 0.10%

Moz

Fans – 178,610

Likes on most recent 5 posts (total) – 112
Comments on most recent 5 posts (total) – 3

Percentage of Fans Engagement – 0.06%

Now I don’t know about you but those numbers seem like an awful waste of time to me. I could definitely see my resources and time being used more effectively elsewhere. Ultimately it depends on your target audience and what niche you are in. I have a facebook page for music fans which I share one track with the fans most days and get an engagement rate of about 2%. This is ok for me seeing as I listen to music throughout the day anyway. I’m killing 2 birds with 1 stone as I listen to music while I write this article and in the process I’m also conducting my research and curation listening to music for my facebook fans.

I’d love to hear your experiences about managing a Facebook page and whether you think it is worth your time. Why don’t you perform the quick test above yourself and let me know what percentage you get.