“Summertime, and the living is easy!” It’s time to relax a little bit, kick back in the hammock and take some time off—unless of course you have a business to promote. Even if you manage to take some well-deserved time off, your social media efforts shouldn’t. Why? Social media is an essential for lead generation in today’s businesses.
Sure, it’s tempting to shut things down when the weather heats up. But those summer months can actually be highly productive months for getting your message out. People don’t stop reading just because it’s summertime. As a matter of fact, some may spend more time online in the summer months browsing the Internet for ideas. And the continued growth of tablet and smart phone usage means that people can sneak a peek at a blog or a tweet anytime and anywhere they want.
There is, however, nothing that says that your social media activities have to be more of the same old thing. Maybe it’s time to change things up a bit. Perhaps the summer months are a good time to leave the heavy reading behind.
One way you can do that is by giving your readers some lighter summer reading. Try going heavy on photos and illustrations with short captions. That’s a great way to keep communicating if you’re in a business such as home building or remodeling. You’ll still want to include enough content to be helpful and useful (and to help the search engines find you). But well-chosen images (with well-written captions) can be highly effective.
Experiment with infographics. Find some really good data that can help your audience, and—instead of writing paragraphs about it—put it in a visual/graphic format that allows your readers an “at-a-glance” summary.
The summer months may also be a good time to spread your social media duties out a bit within your company. If you’re going to be away from your desk for a few weeks, get your other colleagues involved. Get others to contribute. Not only will this take the load off of you (or whoever does your social media sharing), but it can bring a fresh new perspective to the content you create.
If you really can’t find someone to cover for you—and don’t feel comfortable trying something new, try a “best of” series or blogs or tweets. Readers love “best of” lists, and won’t mind seeing something they liked again. And chances are, many of your readers won’t have seen the material before anyway because your readership is most likely evolving all the time.
However you decide to tackle your social media for the summer, the one thing you don’t want to do is stop. It’s important to keep your momentum going. And it’s important to remember that very few adults take the whole summer off. They may spend more time outside doing other things, but they haven’t disappeared. And they’re still looking for information. If they don’t get it from you, they’ll find it from your competitor. After all, he or she is only a click away!
