Does 24 Hour Social Media Matter

Welcome to Episode 346 of Hit The Mic with The Stacey Harris.

So Facebook launched stories much like we've seen on Snapchat for a longer time now and Instagram for quite a while now. We now have the option to share stories on Facebook and so today I wanted to have a little bit of a conversation around this idea of short-term content and its value in our overall marketing plans. Where does this content fit in our big-picture strategy? Does it really hold any value for us from a marketing perspective if it disappears? Goes away so quickly. 24 hours is not that long of a time obviously. So let's talk about that. And I encourage you to come into the private community on Backstage and share your thoughts, especially as we go into next week. while on May 1st you guys will get access to the full training on how to use this stuff and how to make this stuff work for you. We'll do a quick Snapchat review on there, quick Instagram review on there. Facebook stories review and we'll have some training on how to create content once and share it to the multiple channels in a way that makes sense.

If that's something you want to do so check that out. I wanted to talk about this kind of theoretically today, kind of strategically how does this fit? So, first of all it's got to be more than marketing messages. Just like with any other channel the same rules apply when it comes to not being all sales, all promo, all the time. And I think that's one of the big mistakes we're seeing people make right now is there is a ton of actual promo content coming through those channels because the promo does disappear. So every day your posting on Instagram stories or Snapchat or Facebook stories or wherever it is that is your medium of choice and saying, "Don't forget to join this program. Don't forget to join ... " XYZ and that's kind of all you're showing. And so, we need to make sure that we're mixing that in with personality.

Behind the scenes, those kind of pieces that really prop up the promo so that when the promo does come I'm going, "Oh yes, totally. I want in. Because I see the way he runs his business. I see the opportunity she has because of the things she's done. I see how he works with his team ... " Whatever it is for that business. So look at how you can make it, again, more than marketing, more than promo and more than sales messages, so that you're really connecting with the community. Obviously, that's what we want to do with our social media overall but this becomes a little easier to forget when we talk about short-term content. On the flip-side of that, you've got to choose the right space. You don't need to be on all three. Use the one that makes sense for your community.

For example, a lot of you might be looking at Facebook stories and thinking, "Great, yes here's another option for me to show this content." However, I know that I'm not supposed to promote my business on my profile. I'm supposed to do it on my page. And so, I don't have a lot of business community connections there. I've got my colleagues who are not an ideal fit for my customers or I've got just friends and family and obviously they are not my customers. So why would I post content there? The answer to that is ... don't. If it doesn't make sense to you to use that tool because your audience is not there, don't use it. Don't freak out about having to use these tools because they're there. Use the ones that make sense. I'm seeing this a lot, a lot with Snapchat/Instagram. A lot of you said, "Why am I trying to build this audience on Snapchat? Why am I trying to move the needle there when my audience i