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Content, and bad content specifically, has been the buzz of the town this week, and with good reason. As marketing companies spread the word about the importance of online presence, businesses are catching on. But unfortunately, not everyone is a content creation pro, and this has resulted in a mountain of average, recycled content that does not provide value to the average Internet user (and therefore, ultimately has no marketing value either).

So, we want to stress the face that using multiple social media channels is something you do to get the message out, but no amount of platforms will make up for subpar content. If you take anything away from us this month, let it be that quality always trumps quantity. After all, social media content is truly effective when it is not only seen but also shared, and users only share content they consider valuable.

Here are three ways to ensure your content can pass the bad-content litmus test:

1. Present new information, or old information in a new way –this is probably the hardest one for content creators, because it requires real knowledge about the area you’re writing on. There’s no way to fake depth. If you find yourself Googling your topic and skimming content from the first few sites that come up, congrats, you’re in the content recycling business!
2. Write well –this should be easier, since people use language to communicate every day of their lives. We’re not saying you have to be the next Hemingway (“The Sun Also Markets”?), just that you should write in a grammatically correct and easy to understand way. Nothing will undermine your quality ideas (see #1) in the eyes of the reader faster than poor language skills, so dust off that old copy of the Strunk and White.
3. Keep your content platform appropriate –all social media platform have certain unspoken rules. You should abide by these if you want to fit in, and if you want your content to have the best chance of being shared. If you’re reposting a blog post on Twitter, post the most intriguing sentence to hook your followers. Keep Facebook content skewed toward the personal and LinkedIn content toward the professional (yes, you can play two different angles to link to the same post).

Remember, as you develop your different social media channels, don’t get distracted by technical details or the perceived need to post as frequently. Focus on the quality of your posts if you want your content to not only survive, but thrive in the social media environment.

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1. Don’t Be a Robot

The entire reason social media exists is because it is personal, social, and fun. Translation: no one wants to talk to a robot. While posting with regularity is important, make sure your schedule isn’t making you churn out messages that sound flat and are devoid of personality.

We spent a month teaching you the basics of brand buildings, so use them. Every message you put out into the world has the power to change the public’s view of your business, so every message should go through at least a brief editing process for brand consistency. (Tip: you will have better odds of a consistent brand tone if you appoint one person to do the editing

2. But Don’t Get Too Personal

Personal is social media gold, but there are things that can be considered a little too personal for business brand-building types of profiles. Among them are: any controversial statements about politics, religion, and current events; derogatory comments about sports teams, celebrities, or other companies; and anything risque enough to turn off the most conservative segment of your audience. The age-old dating cliche applies here – if you can’t retweet it to your mom, it’s probably not SFM (that is, safe for marketing).

3. Don’t Argue

We all know that guy. He closely monitors the walls of his buddies, waiting for the chance to pounce on any viewpoint that doesn’t match his own convictions. We cannot stress this enough: don’t be that guy. Facebook wall arguments are tiresome when they appear on the wall of a close friend; on a business page, they can be downright repulsive.

If someone else posts something controversial on your wall, it’s time to make a judgment call. If the comment is truly inappropriate or you believe the person is trolling, delete the comment and carry on. If, however, the comment reflects a true concern about your company, we advise you to leave the comment up and respond to it in the most friendly, accommodating, and proactive way possible.

This tactic works for 3 reasons: a) It brings you down to earth and shows your dedication to customer service, b) Chances are the customer is not the only one with this concern, and by dealing with it in the open, you are indirectly handling the inquiries of others. c) It proves that there is a real human on the other side of your profile, something social media users can be skeptical about with business profiles.

There you have it – don’t do these things and you’ll be in for a smoother ride up the winding road to social media marketing domination.

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1. Set ‘em Up

You might have decided to hit the social media circuit hard, but you can’t get started until you’ve set up your accounts. Taking the relatively unexciting couple of hours to set up (or, if you already have them, rebrand) your social media accounts will enable to you to establish a consistent voice, import your contact lists, and will keep you accountable to yourself (once they’re set up, you kinda have to use them). We at Little Jack are big fans of interlinking different social media accounts to get the most mileage out of the content you produce, and this would also be a great time to do that.

2. Less is More

Some young, eager entrepreneurs take the word “domination” to heart and bombard their circles with droves of messages. If you feel like your followers should have at least two messages from you before they have their morning coffee, you’re probably overdoing it. Very few people in the world can keep up that rate and remain interesting, so ease up before your friends disown you and pace yourself a little.

3. But…More is More

While it’s important to keep No. 2 in mind, many more small businesses fall into the trap of what we like to call “the three month taper-off”. That is, excitement abounds when social media is new, but too many small businesses fail to keep up with it and let their profiles collect cobwebs in some dark corner of the web. Remember, truck drivers don’t get truck driver’s block, so there is no reason for you to get writer’s block. Treat social media seriously, as you would print advertising, and keep to a schedule.

4. Choose Your Friends Carefully

In the beginning, every new follower will get your heart racing and give your brain a little jolt of dopamine. And yes, your uncle Sal will compulsively “Like!” every one of your statuses. But your job isn’t done quite yet. Instead, you should make every effort to reach out to individuals and communities that represent and resonate with your brand. These followers have the influence to spread your brand far and wide, and connecting with them will maximize ROI for all the hours you’ve put into social media.

5. Mind the Boring Stuff

Personally, we love to geek out on analytics, though we suspect most normal business owners don’t share our sentiments. Nonetheless, keeping track of your online statistics on at least a monthly basis is crucial to playing the social media game well. Analytics will reveal weird things to you – maybe everyone is chattering on your Facebook wall but no one quite makes the conversion to your website – once you know these things, you can find the missing step, correct it, and become a social media expert.

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Choose Wisely

With literally dozens of options to choose from, selecting the right social media channel can seem like a daunting task. For ideas, check where other businesses in your sector are building an online presence, and above all, use your common sense – if you make sounds, use Bandcamp; if your product translates well into visuals, consider Pinterest. If you’re selling a true niche product, consider building a presence on a web forum that specializes in the subject (trust us, if you can think of it, somewhere, deep in the bowels of the Internet, there exists a forum where people are nerding out about it this very minute).

The Classics

But some social media choices aren’t genre specific. Whatever your business does, it can probably benefit from a blog on your website, where customers can read about developments in the field and get a little part of the lifestyle of your brand. Blogs are always a good idea, because they add personality to your business, and, as they ideally provide valuable information, enhance your site’s visibility.

Most business also develop their social media presence on Facebook, less because Facebook’s platform relates particularly well to what they do and more because everyone is there. Creating a Facebook page for your business is something like the millennial equivalent of being in the Yellow Pages.

Link ‘Em In

Unless you have a dedicated, in-house social media team, you probably don’t have time to create completely different content for 4 different social media channels. This is where cross-linking channels can be incredibly effective. Got a great blog post? Link to it on Facebook, but lead in with a personal question related to the topic to increase involvement. Then, find the most audacious, interesting, or just plain strange sentence from your blog post and post it on Twitter – your followers will likely be intrigued.

In so many words, you are reusing the content, but adapting it to the new format. That last part is crucial, because hyperlinks are not in themselves appealing. For maximum impact when cross-posting content, always match the tone and strategy to the standards of the respective social media channel, lest you appear as a ruthless marketer. Unless, of course, your brand is being a ruthless marketer. Like us!

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“But Jack,” you’ll say, “I have a product that rocks. Do I really need to bother with all this branding stuff?” Ideally, your product speaks for itself, but other factors matter too – the customer might care about your company’s reputation regarding reliability, or how he will be perceived by others when carrying your product around town. This, all the other stuff, is where branding comes into play. And yes, my dear amigos, it does matter.

Repeat after us: Your business is never too small to care about branding. Your business is never doing too well to care about branding.

Because branding always comes back to the crucial question of us vs. them, pick a brand voice and brand values that are unique in your industry. Unique means memorable. If you sell ducting, sell ducting like no one in a 20 mile radius sells it.

Here’s a tip: uniqueness usually involves some kind of backstory. It is a proven fact that the human mind perceives things better in story form. For one, every entrepreneur (and everyone in general) has their favorite business startup story. Usually, this story involves winning against all odds, and something crazy, like running a shoe factory from inside the bathroom … of the next door neighbors. So look into your past and try to build the story of how your business came to be. Chances are, there’s more to it than “we saw an opportunity and went for it”, and the customers deserve to know.

To maximize your exposure it’s important to choose the right channels for spreading your brand. For example, businesses in industries that have a strong visual component can benefit from adopting Pinterest, while more conservative businesses can probably get more mileage out of networking on a traditional platform like LinkedIn. Choose what is appropriate but don’t be afraid to do short-term, low-investment experimentation. Who knows, you might be the first mortician to go viral on Pinterest.

When you have a unique brand, deliver it with consistency. That is to say, if you sell insurance and your brand is all about reliability, your website should probably look professional and not crash the visitor’s browser upon landing. And if you’re Mr. Funny Guy (we wouldn’t know anything about that…), don’t mess up your image by getting into a Facebook argument with a fan over politics.

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Of course, living your brand is easier when you’re the owner of a luxury skincare boutique. Leah lives her brand by showing her face around town, socializing with power players, and generally looking fabulous all around. She puts care into her appearance, and it shows. Whenever anyone sees her or her friends looking good around town, that is living proof of her brand. She is literally representative of her own customer base: outgoing, fun-loving people who work hard and play harder.

Leah started her skincare boutique in 2010, after 20+ years experience in the makeup artist industry. Since its opening, Leah Chavie Skincare has been a mainstay of Chicago’s luxury scene.

The uniqueness of the Leah Chavie brand, according to the woman herself, stems from exclusivity. Product choices are very specific, credible, and align with the the high end brand appeal. Her belief in always growing carries on to her team, who are encouraged to get additional education about the latest skincare methods. In the world of luxury spas, where trends come and go with the seasons, it’s important to stay on the cutting edge and offer the latest technologies. That is why Leah’s boutique features the detoxing body wrap that comes from Spain, and reportedly burns up to 1800 calories per treatment! That is also why she is the exclusive provider of CryoStem Cell Therapy facials (if it sounds rejuvenating, that’s because it is) in all of Chicago.

Despite having the technological upper hand over other spas, Leah instists that skincare is above all a business of personal connections. “I have traveled the world in search of beauty and healthcare and have discovered one thing:”, she says, ”that is it not the items or the treatments offered, it is the people who are there at the salon providing the care.”

Asked about how she communicates her unique brand to the world Leah stresses word of mouth, asking for referrals, and not being afraid to ask for the job. Even today, after all her success, Leah builds contacts everywhere she goes. And she never forgets to ask for the job or that extra referral.

When we asked her how she does it, Leah shrugs it off: “You have to be your brand — always.”

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Logo

It is an unspoken rule that you will need a logo for your business. A good logo allows people to know your brand instantly, without having to labor at reading anything. It will anchor the upper left corner of your website and appear on everything from business cards to promo materials to your actual products. Your logo should represent your company’s brand accurately — are you wacky good fun, or stodgy and reliable?

Now, a lot of people think they’ve got a little Da Vinci in them and attempt to draw the logo themselves, but we would advise you leave your logo to a professional (that doesn’t mean you can’t provide them with your ideas and suggestions). A bad, or even mediocre logo, is spotted instantly, while great logos practically sell product themselves. With so many graphic designers looking for work out there, your logo cost should be more than manageable. It will be the small money you ever spent.

Slogan

In our modern world, company slogans, or catchphrases, have become increasingly important. As we’ve discussed previously, Internet users spend mere seconds on a website before surfing on. If you can’t convey your message in 10 seconds or less, your conversion rates might suffer. The importance of slogans has been been formalized by the WordPress, which automatically inserts the now famous slogan “Just another WordPress blog” at the top of newly created blogs, as a placeholder to encourage slogan creation and use.

The slogan is an ideal way to tackle the Internet ADD phenomenon, because it summarizes your small business in exactly 2 seconds. Take us, for example. Now, we’ve been know to go off the rails sometimes, but our slogan is “Developing your online presence.” That unquestionably describes what we do. It’s brevity conveys confidence. It’s a good slogan, if we do say so ourselves.

When you’re trying to think of yours, put yourself in a mental situation in which you have to explain what your business to someone in under 5 seconds. Come up with a list of potentials, and vet them with the help of employees and friends.

The logo and the slogan are the two fundamentals of your small business brand. Make them good, because once they’re made you probably won’t want to redesign, so they will be around for as long as your business is (hopefully, a long time)!

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The truth is, while we stand by our statement that value always comes first, it is truly rare that a business will be the sole provider of this value. Often (as a matter of fact, if your business idea is any good, always) there will be other businesses that offer the customer something very close to what you offer. Branding is how you differentiate yourself from the pack and make the customer choose you over your competitors.

It might help to think of branding as a sort of argument you’re building in the mind of the customer, to answer the question “Why us?” We discussed the power of rhetoric back in December, when we kicked it with our main man Aristotle. You might want to go back and reread that one, boys and girls, because good branding connects with the customer on all three levels – logical, emotional, and credible.

Which brings us to the crucial point:

To have a successful brand, you need to understand your customer’s needs and desires. Then, somehow, you must resonate with the customer on their level.

So, to get started in building (or rebuilding) your brand, do some brainstorming about what kinds of things your typical customer would find appealing, how you want to appear to the world, and what is appropriate for your field of business (Pickles the Clown probably shouldn’t sell complex financial instruments). Then, it’s only a matter of taking the brainstormed list and building up a cohesive brand, which you will then implement in every point of interaction between you and the customer.

Keep in mind that there is no “right” way to approach branding, even in a particular field – think of Allstate and their brand based on reliability vs. Geico and their brand based on savings and comedy. Both insurance companies are doing quite well, because they found a way to connect with their customers.

All this might begin to sound pretty calculating to you, but before you go all evil-mastermind on us, remember that all this analysis and development always happens behind the curtains. The customer only sees the finished product, that perfectly composed brand that gives your business the je ne sais quoi that makes customers find you irresistible. And don’t worry. As usual, for the next month, we will walk you through it.

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