Social Media 101

How do you make your brand stand out in the millions of Tweets and Facebook updates made daily? With more than 90,000 Facebook fans, 145,000 Twitter followers and the 2011 min Best of the Web award for Use of Social Media, Parenting.com has developed a successful strategy to reach and engage their readers.

Parenting.com's Social Media and Partnerships Editor Alison Dempsey, named as a 2011 Audience Development All-Star, shares her tips on how to make this work for your brand.

What are some tips for what works (and what doesn't) when posting on social media outlets?

I like to use a variation the old K.I.S.S. communication principle - Keep It Simple, Stupid (and short). This is the key to social communication. Social media is a type of micro-blogging. It's a way of communicating to your users what is going on right now, in a quick and easily digestible format. Therefore it is critical that a brand's communication follows: 

• Simple: Don't try to communicate multiple, different ideas in one Facebook post or tweet. Don't tell your users everything about what they are about to click-thru to read. And don't ask a million different questions! (i.e. 'What do you think? Do you agree with this? What would you do differently?') Pick one simple idea that you want to focus on and communicate it clearly and simply.  
• Stupid: Don't assume too much of your readers! Avoid complexity as much as you can. Remember, your content is appearing in news feeds which are cluttered with hundreds of different ideas, topics, points of view so don't assume your readers know everything about your brand, your content, your industry, what you posted about yesterday. 
• Short: This one cannot be overlooked. Face it, your social media users are not on Facebook to read! You need to keep catching their attention fast. And the best way to do that is through keeping posts and messages as brief as possible.  

Buddy Media's research found that posts with 80 characters or less had 27 percent higher engagement rates, yet only 19 percent of posts were of this length. That makes Twitter's 140-character limit on tweets seem long!

What are some general tips for not only getting people to follow or like you, but to engage with you as well?

In terms of getting your audience to engage with you, the simplest thing you can do is to ask question. If all you do is share information, then your audience may consume it, but won't be as likely to engage with it.

Likewise, if you want your followers to do something, tell them to do it! For example, our most "liked" post to date was "If your kids are happy and you know it, click 'like'!"

A Buddy Media research study found that by placing a call to action or question at the end of the post, the post will receive a 15 percent higher engagement rate.

Now that so many companies and brands have a social media presence, how can you stand out in people's cluttered Facebook or Twitter feeds?

Find your social voice and stick to it! Remember, your social content is showing up in your readers' feeds, right next to their best friends and most trusted sources of information. And if you sound like a commercial every time you post ("Buy me!" "Read this!" "Check out our site!"), your fans will quickly ignore you.

A lot of brands communicate in social media like they do in their advertising and marketing materials. That's not going to work. Your fans have let you into their social circle and you need to provide more than self-promotion. You need to provide conversation, entertainment and valuable information to your users.

If you have multiple editors updating your social channels, make sure they understand and use a consistent voice.

What works for Parenting is a casual but trustworthy tone of voice. We try not to take ourselves too seriously, but we also try to maintain our image of a trusty resource.

What do you see as the future of social media?

As social platforms continue to collect more information about us - our likes, interests, demographics, networks - I think we will become much less reliant on seeking out information we want or need, because we will begin to expect that relevant information will be served to us.

I also think that we will continue on the path of transitioning from being passive media users to being more active media users. The future of media is not in one-way media communication or broadcast, but rather interactive and engaging two-way communication - i.e. likes, comments, recommendations, shares, etc.

What's a new social media strategy you've tried? How has it worked?

This is more of an execution than a strategy, but we recently executed a Facebook "like"-gated promotion designed to help us grow our Facebook fan base. Users had to "like" Parenting on Facebook in order to be able to able to enter to win a family trip to Legoland and other cool weekly prizes. We grew our fan base by 65 percent in six weeks! And we're expecting to hit 100,000 fans by August.

How easy is it to try new things with social media outlets?

The best thing about social media is that it's generally free and very easy to use. For this reason, it's really easy to try new things in social media. And because it tends to give you an almost instant - and measurable - response, it's really easy to quantify success and refine strategies based on tests.