Batman, Robin & Batgirl: The power of thirds in Social Media

Batman, Robin and Batgirl. The Three Stooges. Three Amigos. Three men and a Baby. Fantastic Five (two are dead now) and the Three Wise Men.

Three really is a powerful combo especially when it comes to social media content, but a lot of businesses seem to miss this, instead posting the same message in varying forms day in, day out.

"We make pants"
"Look at the pants we've made"
:Look at what our customers are saying about the pants we've made"
"Here's a 10% discount off of the pants we make"
"Pants, pants, pants"
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

This is a snap shot of the standard approach most businesses take on their social media and you'll be forgiven if half-way through, you either lost interest, or saw right through the salesy salesy push and got the hump.

So in a world where content is king, what are you as business owners supposed to talk about in the social media saloon?
Well, hitch up your horse, take off your spurs and strap yourself in cowboy/girl, as this social media rodeo is about to kick off and reveal the pro's secrets.

In the social media planning world we use our own system developed in-house with some guidance from the academic world which makes planning creative and varied social media posts easy peasy.

The gist of it is that social media content should be split into thirds in order to keep content fresh and not repetitive. What those thirds are, depends on your market, your sector, your business and your people.
You could for example, split your social media activity into the following thirds:

⅓ of your social content promotes your business, converts readers, and generates profit.

⅓ of your social content could surface and share ideas and stories from thought leaders in your industry or like-minded businesses.

⅓ of your social content could be based on personal interactions and build your personal brand.

At a rudimentary level, simply rotate each day's social media content to a different 1/3, ensuring you apply the correct usage to your specific social media channels (assuming you've identified what

each of your social media platforms will focus on), and syndicate content where appropriate, using Hashtags researched on Hashtagify to ensure reach and relevant Hashtags that will assist other social media users interested in that conversation to find you.
Have I lost you? Sorry, i'll slow down a touch.

It's all very well using the rule of thirds to ensure you aren't repetitive, however this doesn't help you create engaging content, or ensure markets see it....but it is a start.

Defining what experience you want your customers to have on each social media platform is also vital and we like to split our platform experiences into thirds too. For example. Your Facebook may focus on people, special offers and sharing fun content, where as your Snapchat may be used as an access all areas, backstage pass, cross media sharing, and people centric. The rule of thirds will still apply to the content, but we're slowly becoming more refined in what we are going to post on each platform.

So you've decided on using Instagram everyday, and you've identified what three purposes it will have. Now you need to create a post. If we take the first 1/3 suggestion (as I would argue it's the hardest as its the closest to what is currently posted) instead of the standard zzzzzzzz pants post, we could actually syndicate content.
Syndication involves using clips of pre-written content from your website, Blogs, media, reviews, epitaphs, whatever you want, but it's easy and can be customised for the post.

For example, if I wanted to share a post to activate my first 1/3, I could syndicate text from the news page on this website about our new Living Website concept. It would look like this: "The Living Website is a creative approach for websites harnessing modern rich media techniques to bring your website to life #DPinsights #webdesign #prototype #northampton" with a link to the page, added image if required and it took me all of 30 seconds.

With the right protocols and use of the rule of thirds, your social media could be huger than huge. As usual, if you want to find out more, simply click on the "Light the Beacon" button!