Stand Out in Social Media Marketing? 3 Steps To Take Today.

Spend anytime on social media or marketing blogs and you’ll see advice to make remarkable content. Yes. Be remarkable and you will stand out in your social media marketing.

Ah. Yes. Remarkable. Let’s do that.

Where did I put the recipe for “Remarkable”?

Creating remarkable content is sort of like saying “just make it go viral.” In other words, not at all helpful.

Thanks to the democratization of publishing that the internet has created, according to Eric Schmidt Google  CEO, we’re creating more content per day than we did throughout human history up through 2003. Let’s face it. Creating “Remarkable” and “Viral” require the ability to tap into the zeitgeist of the moment, by luck or by speed and with the sheer amount of information out there, how do you stand out in social media marketing?

Is this a post encouraging you to abandon remarkable? Never.

But consider approaching your content from a different perspective. A million drops in the bucket maybe better than an overwhelming deluge which can’t be managed. Deluges are exciting. Consistency plods along getting results.  Forget flash. Slow and steady wins the race.

The truth is, with the fast pace of digital marketing, including social media, there is something remarkable about consistency. Consistency is incredibly challenging. Ever talk to a blogger about their blogging frequency? How about a social media manager about tweeting on the weekends? Here’s another analogy: what’s harder, one hit song or a lifetime of hit songs? Exactly. 

Remarkable content is consistent content.

Slow and steady matters. It isn’t necessarily the quantity, but the consistency. I’ll take a 4 year-old blog with 7 quality entries a year over the one with 5 slapped together entries a week for 3 months.

You won’t find too many people glamorizing this approach, because it isn’t glamourous. But the dirty truth of digital marketing is that the long term benefits to consistent, well-placed content are extraordinary. Sure, the more your content is shared, the more effective it becomes. Sometimes that happens immediately (and everyone claps and jumps around) and sometimes it happens over time (and eventually, eyebrows raise and heads start to nod).

Here’s how to make consistency remarkable:

Consistent Blogging Over Time

In the blogging world, there is this push-pull about quantity over quality. Should I write when I have only brilliant insights or should I write on a schedule? Here’s what I say: I don’t care, just write. Yes, every post you write is a reflection of you and your business; so write with purpose. Over the long term, your blog will provide you better results when its been there for years rather than weeks. The more frequently its updated, the better, but if you or your business are updating your blog 3X a month, you’re waaaaaaaay ahead of the vast majority of business blogs and probably ahead of your competition.  Remember that whatever you create on the blog is there forever. You will continue to get traffic from blog posts that are years old. Really. You will. Unlike your social posts, your blog posts remain searchable looong after the post is public.  Blog posts are hard workers. There is power in a collection of posts created overtime. They will keep working for you – no matter how remarkable they were.

Stand Out by Responding

Ever notice that few people actually respond to mentions of their name or business in social media sites? I’m guilty of this. In an effort to not create a stream of “thank you’s” and @mentions, I’m not as visible about this as I should be. The thing is, that it really doesn’t matter WHY I don’t respond, the message to the audience is the same: “I don’t care enough about creating a relationship with you to say “thanks” or “hello.” Yah, kind of…”icky” right? I read a unique solution to this over the weekend. Point is, if you want to be remarkable as a social media presence or as a business, respond to every single mention. Effort? yes! Remarkable? You bet.

Choose Your Social Networks-Carefully.

Unless your audience is ridiculously socially engaged, you don’t need to be on every single social network.  Go where you can stand out with the right community. Guess what? It might not be Facebook. Yes, Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla, but these days its definitely the place of diminishing returns (thanks to  EdgeRank changes). But this is not a Facebook rant. This is a reminder: find your audience, communicate regularly, thoughtfully on the social networks of choice. You may have to experiment to  find your place. Be patient. Once you build an audience on a particular network, you’ll be loathe to leave them behind, so go on some dates before you commit. If your business has the manpower and tracking mechanisms in place to be on every single social network, be my guest. I’ll see you there. But if you’re like most businesses, you’re better off being selective with your efforts. Choosing carefully and concentrating your efforts.  Commit to the community. Consistently. Remarkable.

How else can you be consistently remarkable?