Online Reputation Management

Don’t Floor It: A Less-Is-More Approach To Social Media Presence

Anyone familiar with Spongebob Squarepants (and sympathize with his nervousness during driving lessons) would remember his crucial mistake of “flooring it” when pulling out of the driveway. Hitting on all sixes is ill advised for anything short of driving away from a pyroclastic flow; the same principle applies in social media optimization. Establishing a social media presence requires both visibility and rapport, and opening the floodgates without care for quality only serves to alienate you from the audience.

Audiences crave anticipation, and giving them too much information at once could cause them to tire of your content and lose interest, if not outright un-follow you or your brand out of annoyance. This is doubly so if the content you give them is half-baked, poorly written, and overly promotional.

Facebook in particular has taken notice of this common mistake and is taking action against overly promotional content from brands, rendering poorly written social media copy obsolete. And they are not alone; search engines like Google+ and Bing, have utilized similar practices to appropriately rank search engine results.

Long story short, mediocre content in volume is a no-sell in your social media strategy. Trigger-happily posting on your social media assets would most likely scare away your target customers, but shooting well-timed, meticulously worded updates will hit the bull’s eye every time.

Adequately spacing your content is also a good way to generate interest and generate buzz; teasers for major films are a good example of this in practice. Give the audience content that they’d like to look at, share, and talk about. And while creating content related to your personal or corporate brand is a given, it should neither be the be-all, end-all of your social media presence nor should it swamp the news feeds of dedicated followers. At most, your content should not only be interesting and eye-catching but also professional and meaningful to the viewer.

Nothing good ever came from doing things too fast. Giving the audience something to like and share without flooding them not only keeps their interest but also gives them time to fully appreciate the content you share. Your online footprint and reputation will benefit from it.