Raul’s social media tips: “Gardening” your social media properties
About a couple of months ago, my good friend Peter Newbury asked me to give a talk at the Science Online Vancouver May 2012 event. I did so without any hesitation simply because it was Peter Newbury who was asking me, and even though I rarely give talks for free (see my post on the Economics of Free), Peter is a great friend and I am always happy to contribute to Vancouver’s scientific community.
Even more so, I am keen to contribute to the science communicator’s online life. I made a comment at my talk (alongside the lovely Eric M. Johnson) on how I “garden” my social media properties and people found it funny, interesting and valuable. I also spoke at Social Media Camp Victoria 2012 on how to grow robust online communities using multiple social platforms, and used the same gardening analogy. So here is what I mean by “gardening your social media properties”.
My gardening strategy is as follows:
1. Create a stock of content.
I publish (or collect) enough online content to provide a useful and interesting stream to my followers on each of my social outlets: Twitter (academic and personal/social media), Facebook (my blog has a Facebook page, I do not allow everybody to see my personal Facebook), Google Plus (where I have a personal stream and my blog has a Google Plus Brand Page), Pinterest (which I only have one), Instagram (which is also my only one, and personal). I have stopped using Foursquare for a number of reasons that I can detail in other blog post.
2. Share that content via different outlets, depending on target audience
For example, I don’t do what other bloggers frequently do: they just cross-post from their blog to Facebook to Twitter (something which I find incredibly stupid, as the cross-linking often leaves their links truncated or disappearing). That is cross-linking without adding value. I only cross-link when what I crosslink is adding value in both outlets. Now, the problem of truncated text is not only specific to Facebook, but it is a big problem with Pinterest as it doesn’t auto-shrink and sometimes my own Pins cross-linked from Pinterest to Twitter also come truncated. But at least, you can click on the Pinterest URL and read my full post. With Facebook-to-Twitter, it doesn’t make sense at all.
3. I review my content to ensure non-repetition.
Nothing worse than seeing the same post in the 5 platforms people follow me on. Even if it is the same post, I try to make sure that if I shared a personal post on Google Plus (G+) on Monday morning, I can share it on Facebook on Monday evening, and I add “lead” text (e.g. text that comes as a preface) to make sure that the post isn’t exactly the same. This is something a lot of people don’t do, and it is frustrating.
Given that I don’t have a lot of time to “garden” my social properties, sometimes what I do is I just make sure that my posts are directly linked to Twitter, and one day a week, I ensure to cross-post through my platforms. Like today, Saturday, which often is my only free day, but right now I’m doing exactly that, gardening my social outlets. And ensuring that people don’t find the same post all the time on 5 different streams.
Hopefully these tips are useful!
