If you’re an A-lister with a massive advertising budget, you can get your marketing message out to any audience you like. Targeted advertising online or on social media makes it easier to bombard your target audience with adverts, post and videos. Visit a web page and you can find the product you viewed following you around the internet. It’s enough to make you feel heartily sick of a product or business you may once have admired. Of course, most of us have the opposite problem. It’s a challenge to get our message in front of the right people. However that doesn’t stop most of us worrying about annoying our followers by sharing too much. The question is, how much marketing is too much? If you’re really worried about getting on everyone’s nerves, here are a few ways to avoid it.
How much are you blogging?
I gave a talk to a networking group recently, all about the benefits of blogging and how to make a start with it. There were a lot of good questions, including the most frequently asked one: how often should you blog?
An SEO expert will tell you that about once a month is fine. My clients tend to like twice a month because it gives them plenty to share on social media. I blog every week because I’m a big mouth and it’s what I do. I’m guessing that if you went onto a writer’s website and didn’t see a fair amount of writing, you’d be a bit taken aback.
When I mentioned that I’d once heard someone talk about blogging three or four times a week, the audience reacted with horror. I suspect that the reaction had more to do with the fact that they couldn’t imagine doing it themselves. It made me think about how I would react to that many blogs from one person in a single week. Pretty overwhelmed, I imagine. Even if the content was useful I’d struggle to keep up and would ultimately give up.
Oversharing on social
If you saw everything your friends and pages shared on Facebook, you’d never get anything else done. Some people only share once a day, others advocate posting several times. No-one will ever see everything so you don’t have to worry quite so much.
If people are going to get bored of you on social media, it’ll often be because you share the same thing over and over again. They might like funny memes and inspirational quotes, but if that’s all you post they might wonder whether there is anything else going on. It’s not just going to get repetitive, it’s also pointless. No-one will have a clue what your business does.
Of course, the same principle will apply if you only share ‘look at what you can buy’ posts. You need to give your audience something helpful so that they ultimately trust you when you’re looking for a sale. The most engaging posts are ones that focus on your customers, so try a variety of different things and see which ones they like best.
Too many emails?
Finally, email, potentially the area where the worst offenders lurk. I’ve unsubscribed from mailing lists that bombarded me every day and I’m sure you have too. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with an email series where you send out five emails over five days to introduce yourself to a new subscriber – as long as they know that’s what’s coming. If they don’t know you’re going to drop down to one or two a month after that they might just unsubscribe straight away.
As with anything else, variety is key. So is monitoring your analytics so you can see how people are reacting. If you need to inject a little variation into your blogging and social media get in touch, or subscribe to my mailing list* to receive your free guide ‘Do I need a writer?’
*I solemnly swear I will never email you on a daily basis.
