If you are actively promoting your work on Twitter, Facebook, and other social medias, you can end up running into one big problem: you can’t post your own work often enough to really drive traffic to your website. This leaves you with two options: you can post repeat content or you can post other people’s work.
Obviously you don’t want to be posting the same piece of content every single day or you risk losing followers. But how soon should you post repeat content? Is there a best practice for search engine optimization or internet marketing?
Posting Other People’s Work
I am a huge fan of posting other people’s work. In fact, I believe whole-heartedly in the 80-20 rule. That rule says 80% of the posts should be other people’s work, and 20% should be your own. There is one minor difference.
The rule says you should primarily post other people’s work because you don’t want to annoy your followers with sales type posts. They will see too many and stop following you. I call BS on that if you’re doing things right. If you post stuff that sounds like all you’re doing is trying to sell, then yes, people should leave. However, if you’re providing high quality content that benefits others, then post your own stuff if you have it!
I post a lot of links to other people’s content because they have great content. I have great content, they have great content, and everyone should see all of this great content!
Posting Your Own Work
After I write a piece, I put it in my queue to be posted. I don’t run out and post it immediately (mostly because I have things lined up already). Now obviously I want more people to come to my website instead of to someone else’s, but I want to make sure people are coming for the right reasons.
Let’s suppose you’re just starting your blog. You can write three pages per week, and you promote those on your Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ accounts. How long until you can go back and start to promote those first pieces of content again?
The answer is: it depends on the account.
Twitter – Twitter feeds move rapidly, especially for anyone that has over 100 followers. You can actually post the same content in the morning as in the afternoon, and you likely won’t have the same follower see it twice.
A good rule of thumb for Twitter is to post in the morning, post in the evening (with an ICYMI tag) and then post again 4 or 5 days later. After that, put the content on reserve for 6 weeks, and then add it to your long list of postings. After you have a large history of content on your site, you won’t have the problem of wondering when to repost.
Facebook – Facebook is a little trickier. They show your posts based on algorithms rather than based on a strict timeline of showing everything.
Instead of posting in the morning and afternoon, post it early in the week in the morning, and then later in the week in the evening. You will capture two different crowds. That ICYMI tag (which means In Case You Missed It) is helpful so people don’t think it’s a different blog post being linked to.
After 2 or 3 months you can start to post repeat content since your followers will (hopefully) have grown in number.
Google Plus – Google Plus is a whole different beast. Many of the posts seen on there are found through searches rather than by following someone’s timeline.
On my G+ page I only post things once. I have yet to go back and double up since many people don’t actively watch their G+ newsfeed the way they do their Facebook or Twitter. If you want to repost, space things out by a couple of months, and make sure the description is entirely different (with different hashtags).
Post Repeat Content
Content is the lifeblood of your website. But it does far more good if people are able to easily find it. Naturally it should be optimized for the search engines, but it should also be actively shared with your followers.
How often do you post repeat content? Do you find it irritates followers, or do they even seem to notice?
At Sery Content Development we manage people’s social media accounts. Through strategic posting, well written content, and careful online marketing we brand them as experts in their industry.