Q: How do you be consistent with branding and content across multiple social networks without repeating yourself across all of them?
A: I cannot stress enough the importance of this question (and properly implementing the answer;). The thing with social media is that its ALL ABOUT your brand. Who are you, who is your audience, and what do they care about? Once you know these things then you can start to develop your voice in social media. Knowing what your audience cares about gives you tremendous insight into what they will want to engage with online.
That said, what you are really asking about is a term I just learned somewhat recently which is, “social media optimization”. The worst thing you can do is to blast the same little message to twitter, facebook, instagram, google+, linkedin, and your blog etc. Why? For 2 crucial reasons. First, people have absolutely no reason to follow you on multiple platforms, and second because each platform has its own culture and ways of communicating. If you’re not tailoring your message to fit into that culture, then people will know it right away and dismiss you.
Finally, you should take the time to really determine which social channels you actually should be on based on where your audience spends their time. Why bother with Twitter if your peeps aren’t on Twitter? Find ways to say what you need to say on each social platform in the culture of that platform (Instagram and Pinterest are all about beautiful visuals, Facebook is about conversation and engagement, Twitter…. well Twitter is still a mystery to us!).
