Social Desire

Written on April 3, 2009 – 5:36 pm | by Shana Albert |

The first session of IM Spring Break on Social Media day was "Creating Content for Social Media – How to create the content and make it stick". Kenny Hyder, Greg Finn and Brent Csutoras were on this sessions panel and what a Rock’n job they did. It was an awesome session!!

First up was Ken of PositionTech. He started with "Content is King. And, if your content sucks it won’t go anywhere." And, moved on to explaining that it takes more than just ideas. Your content needs to be compelling. To show this Ken compared the two sites Watch it Shred with Will it Blend. Both of these sites have a very similar type of viral content…. Watch it Shred has videos of many different items that they put through a large shredder to see if it will shred. Will it Blend puts many different types of items into a blender to see if they will blend. They both started their YouTube accounts around the same time, but Watch it Shred has 3,553 subscribers while Will it Blend has 178,164 subscribers. Why such a huge difference? Because of the question, "Will it Blend". And, this question causes the viewer to wonder…. will it in fact blend? See, questions need answers. Viewers watch to find out…. will it blend. The question is compelling.

Kenny offers some tips….

Tips to make your content sticky

• Think about what has done well.
• Be compelling - how can I intrigue my readers?
• Think about your audience

Next up was Brent Csutoras

Brent starts off talking about how Businesses often wonder how social media pertains to them. What should I write about…. how is my product going to work in social? How am I going to participate?

But, Brent assures us it doesn’t have to be the most extreme thing. Social Media can apply to anything.

For a company to come up with things to write about he suggests….

Step back & Identify your:

• Social Goals - What do you ultimately want? Do you want more links? More traffic, etc..
• Desired Keywords - what do you want to be known for? What do you want people searching for when they find you?
• Related Keywords - loosely related terms.

Once that is done the Research begins.

Research social sites for what has worked for others or failed for others, Check competitors and see what they are doing, and Check Search Engines.

Some tips that Brent suggested were…

Tips

• Involve your staff - memos. Keep all informed of plans.
• Current events - watch them and use them. People love what’s going on right now.
• Avoid "10" - Top 10 gets old fast.
• Don’t accept crap and don’t push crap either. Throw it in the trash.

Next up Gregg Finn of 10e20 who spoke about Tactics for Creating content.

Gregg starts talking about content and what makes for bad, good, great and pants crappingly awesome content. Yes, I did say, "pants crappingly awesome" content. You are dying to know what that means huh? This is how Gregg defines it…

Pants Crappingly Awesome Content

• Content that stands out
• Readers Can’t stop reading it
• Takes serious man hours to create
• Extremely well written
• Great looking
• Immediately vote and IM friends about it.

Gregg then goes into some detail about the Do’s & Don’ts of Creating Content…

Do’s

• Be comprehensive. Make sure your content is inclusive.
• Be consumable - Make it so the reader doesn’t have to read every word for them to understand it.
• Be Relevant - Make sure your message is on point, content "fits" on your site.
• Be Niche - Quality targeted content is better than average general content.
• Be Thorough - Make sure all spelling / grammar is on point. Take the time to do it right.
• Be Supportive - Provide detailed media, link to sources when necessary.
• Be Attractive - Take the time to use well designed images.

Don’t

• Don’t be overly linkbaity - Users can see when you are trying too hard.
• Don’t be sloppy - Check with others on spelling & grammar.
• Don’t be greedy - Keeps ads minimal & make sure pop-ups are non existent

So, as you can see the "Creating Content for Social Media" session was a huge success. The speakers rocked. And, the information I got out of it was amazing. Wait until you hear about the other sessions…. the rest of the Social Media Sessions at IM Spring Break were just as good as this one!!