Does it sound like you?
Before your team posts content to your social feeds…
…make sure it reflects your communication style and approach.
When I first started my photography business, I was a deer in headlights.
I had absolutely no clue what the hell I was doing.
For months, I posted photos without any stories, tags, hashtags - NOTHING.
Looking back, I’m a bit embarrassed by that, but it was my reality.
At one point, a friend sat me down and pointed out that putting nothing in the caption was severely hurting my chances of being discovered by folks that could benefit from my work.
As a very kind gesture, he offered to help by selecting some of my photos, writing captions for each, and posting them on my behalf.
At the time, his list of followers was about 25X the size of my audience, so I thought I just stepped in shit with all this good fortune. I assumed I was about to get a major influx of new eyeballs on my work.
He posted consistently for about 2 months, adding in the captions, slapping on some appropriate hashtags, and guess what happened?
Absolutely nothing.
How could this be?
His posts have 90 kazillion comments and thousands of likes and my posts are basically farting in the wind with no one around to hear them.
Upon further investigation, I figured out why it wasn’t working.
It had to do with the communication style.
While his witty and sarcastic, one-liner approach worked wonders for the engagement of his content, they added zero value to my audience.
And the lack of likes, comments and shared cemented that fact home for me.
I was stuck, but this friction point ultimately led to hiring a creative consultant who helped me screw my head on straight and guide me towards the type of content that I share today.
But this experiment taught me several great lessons:
What works for one person doesn’t always work for everyone
My online content needs to be written in my own communication style and personality
In addition to personality, the content needs to share something of value for my audience
I share this with you because many experts have marketing teams charged with their online content.
Don’t blindly sign off on everything they create.
Be sure to give it the once-and twice-over before it’s posted to make sure that the story attached sounds like something you’d say or write and that there’s a teachable moment for those who read it.
Otherwise, your content is simply adding to the noise on social media.
For more information on storytelling strategies for expert-based business owners, I share a lot of insights and strategies on my blog. Sign up for it here and that’ll save you time commuting to my website to read it :)