Social Media for Outdoor Promotions - More is Not Always Better

As promised, I want to expand on my original blog Social Media for Outdoor Promotions - What, When, and How Much. The first point I made was that more is not always better. One of the best ways to look at this topic is to look at your own behavior on Facebook. Have you ever hidden anyone from your news feed? If you're too nice for that, have you ever wanted to hide someone from your news feed? One of the main reasons we unfollow someone in the outdoor industry on Facebook is because they over post. Your fishing friends will get sick of seeing you in their news feed if you post every hour of the day, and those are the people you are trying to reach.

A good social media promoter isn't one who shares the most content, it's one who reaches the most people with the content they share. It can be tough, especially if you pro staff for several companies who are on Facebook. No sooner than you share a post from one of them, does another one post something valuable. The important thing is to resist the temptation to share again right away. Unless a post is trending (being shared by a lot of people in a short period of time) then it's best to wait until later in the day. Otherwise people (who haven't unfollowed you) will scroll right by it figuring you're just on another one of your rants.

Over posting does two things; it dilutes the message of the individual posts, and it subsequently renders you invisible to the people you want to reach. I'll use a metaphor. Take a glass of really good root beer for example. If you offer it to everyone you know that likes good root beer they will probably be psyched. Repeatedly offer them more root beer and eventually they will get sick of it, and will avoid you to avoid being offered more root beer. Now take that same glass of root beer and put a little water in it. Chances are no one will notice. Add a little more water later, and even more later in the day, and at some point you will become known as the guy who waters down his root beer. Posting about the same thing over and over will make people sick of you and they will unfollow you, or become conditioned to scrolling when they see you in their newsfeed. Either way you have now become invisible.

Now take into consideration how the facebook news feed works. How many times have you noticed a post from several days ago appear in your newsfeed because one of your friends has liked it? If that same person just posted about the same product or business earlier that day, thinking it was okay because the first post was from yesterday, then it appears in your newsfeed twice. If this happens repeatedly people will stop listening.

In order to be taken seriously you need to calculate how often you post about the same topic or product. You also need to take into account how often you post on social media in general. If you're using Facebook for product promotion you should be limiting your posts to two or three per day (most days) so as not to become invisible. The next step is to make your posts count. How you phrase your post is equally as important as how often you post, but that's a topic for a future blog...stay tuned.