I’m so excited to be guest posting for SocialFish that it took forever to finally settle down and pick something to write about. This is my first monthly guest post about life in the trenches managing social media for an association. I had tons of thoughts and drafted a big mess of a post, but it’s too confusing for even me to follow so I figured it would probably be best for everyone if I just took ONE idea and elaborated on it.

It was easy to pick the one idea because it’s the thing that haunts me on a daily basis–curating content for social media outposts. I have the good fortune of managing ASHA’s Facebook page and Twitter account, and try to provide content to each of those channels on a daily basis (Monday through Friday). Think about it. If you had to pull stuff from your association’s web site five days a week and deliver it to a mix of members and non-members, what would you choose? Does your site have five new items per week that are of broad enough interest, aren’t overly sales-y, and are interesting enough to inspire fans to act by “liking,” commenting or clicking back to your site? How about stuff they’d re-tweet?

I don’t know about you, but these are a few things I keep in mind when I pick stuff to tweet or post on Facebook:

• Is this relevant to both members and non-members? If you’re posting content to a members-only group, this is a non-issue, but if you’re using Facebook and Twitter to reach a broader audience than just members, it’s important to make sure what you post has broad relevance and does not link back to content located on a members-only portion of your web site.
• What’s the line between being helpful and being sales-y? I suggest treading very lightly with product promotion on social networks. On one hand, some level of promotion may be appreciated–I personally like discounts or learning about new products, but others don’t like it. Let analytics be your guide. Maybe for your particular association’s social networks, promotions go over well and result in lots of click-thrus and conversions. If so, maybe it’s good to increase the frequency of those types of posts. But if you don’t get a lot of interest–if nobody “likes” or re-tweets those types of posts, and/or if they don’t result in conversions, it’s probably best to limit those types of posts.
• How casual do you want to be? We’re talking Facebook and Twitter here–obviously some level of informality is appropriate, but how casual is too casual? Yes, you’re supposed to interact with your fans/followers and engage in conversation, but where do you draw the line? It depends. There’s not one right answer–the content you post should support the goals you’re trying to achieve. If you’re there to drive traffic to your web site, merely asking people how their weekend was or what they’re doing to celebrate President’s Day probably won’t help achieve that goal as well as posting items with links back to your site will.

How about you–what’s your content strategy for your association’s social media outposts? Do you use some type of calendar or spreadsheet to plan posts in advance or do you just wing it daily? What have been your most successful posts? How about least successful?

(photo credit)