Wednesday, October 10, 2012

'Cascading Content' Social Media Strategy for the Busy Professional



Every business owner and professional at this point should at least know that social media is vital to a healthy business. However, not every busy professional has the time or money to dedicate to social media – or so they think. Jay Berkowitz of Ten Golden Rules has created a model called ‘Cascading Content’ that provides a simple social media strategy for any company or individual. The infographic below illustrates the concept:
Click image to view larger

Think of Cascading Content like a waterfall: you must start with a full pool, or in this case, a main piece of engaging content, such as an article, press release, video or presentation. You add this main content to your website (it’s great fodder for the search engines) and then break it up into smaller bits that are digestible by the different social media sites. For example, the long version of this blog post is an articlethat is posted on the Ten Golden Rules website and has also been sent out in an e-newsletter. Once this blog is posted, I will write brief posts for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, G+ and, since we have a cool infographic, I can even post it on Pinterestwith a link back to the full article.
There were three articles that were written for the e-newsletter and posted on the website, so I can follow this process for all three articles. Although this should not be the only content in your social media channels, Cascading Content is a quick and easy way to stretch the great content you do have over several weeks to populate your social media channels and engage your audience. And remember, people like to get their content in all different ways – some prefer reading a blog post like this one while others would rather receive an email or follow a page on Facebook. With the Cascading Content model, your content is available in whatever format your audience chooses to see it.
How do you manage your social media currently? Have you ever tried anything like Cascading Content or would you follow this model? Tell us about your experiences in the comments below.