6 Points to Help Decide if Your Idea is Blog Worthy

A client came to us recently with a great question: How do you decide whether to post an idea to Facebook or your blog? It’s a great question, one that many people have probably asked themselves during the initial stages of their social media marketing. Here are some guidelines for knowing when to post to which platform. If you answer, “Yes” to these three questions, write a blog post 1. Do you have more than 140 characters to say about the topic? Of course, Facebook will allow you to go over Twitter’s 140-character limit, but this is a good guideline. If you have more than 200 words or two key ideas to share, you should probably turn your idea into a full blog post. 2. Is your purpose to teach something to others? Whether you want to share how to make the prefect soufflé or how to find the best coupons online, there’s probably enough information to create a post. If it’s challenging enough to require “teaching,” it’s a big enough idea to garner a blog post. 3.  Will it take more than 3.2 seconds to understand? Okay, so maybe that’s not an official number, but the idea still stands. Most people will view your business’s Facebook or Twitter posts as they’re scrolling through a feed. You don’t have a lot of time to get your point across. If the idea is too hard to understand while browsing, you should put it in a blog post. 3 Times When Facebook and Twitter are the way to go 1. When you have a quick or light-hearted comment about something going on in your business. Use Facebook or Twitter to say, “Happy Birthday to Mary in Accounting!” or “Look for our new commercial on the Golf Channel!” 2. When you’re looking for immediate feedback, engagement or reaction. You could post something like “Have you been to the store lately? What do you think of our new line of specialty dog treats?” and take advantage of your fans’ immediate response. This is also a good opportunity to share online coupons or deals: “Save money with our Spring Special – 20% off our next purchase with coupon code 123ABC.” 3. When you want the picture to do the talking. We always recommend pictures or graphics in blogs, but those are generally supplemental materials. In a Tweet or post, they can be the main idea. If you work at a veterinarian’s office and the doctor operated on a wild bird, you could post a picture with a comment like, “Here’s Dr. Smith with the Barn Owl she saved and released back into the wild.” There’s not always a black and white answer to when you should post on which platform, but these are some basic guidelines. Don’t forget about opportunities to cross-post ideas! You could write a blog post, but then Tweet something like, “Check out our new blog post on how to improve social media marketing,” with a link to your post. Do you have any online marketing questions? Leave a comment and we’ll be happy to write a post to address your challenges!