Arguably, content is the currency of the social web. It’s the foundation for all written communications—your blog, website, newsletter, and so on. People search for content. It’s what makes them click, follow, share, subscribe, comment, donate, and purchase. I’ve heard that attention is today’s scarcest commodity. To get someone’s attention is to get their most valuable resource–time. The range and type of content that is available on the social web is extensive and includes multimedia such as videos, images, infographics, and of course text.

Knowing this, it comes as no surprise to savvy communicators that all content is repurposable and repackagable.  But how do you make it work? 

As you may know, BurrellesLuce partners with Engage121 to provide its clients real-time social media monitoring and evaluation. Recently,  Engage121 and Social Flow teamed up to produce a blog and webinar series covering the top Eight Best Practices for Optimizing Your Social Media Publishing, and I wanted to pass along some of their tips to the BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers.

In a nutshell, the eight tips are:

1. Use what you already have and start with great content.

2. Timing is everything.  Have a plan. Don’t over-publish but don’t under-publish either (see #4).

3. Have a schedule and master the content cycle flow—listen, plan, create, publish, evaluate, and repeat. The cycle is repetitive and continuous.

4. Think outside your time zone—it’s okay to re-post at different times of the day (although you may want to re-word slightly so it’s not identical).

5. Engage and reward your audience. Give them something of value. In addition to using content that resonates with your audience, don’t forget to thank them, for example, an exclusive offer to something. Give them a reason to come back and continue the conversation.

6. Make sure your website encourages social sharing. Also note that most new custom Facebook apps have both the “like” and tweet buttons integrated—a win-win!

7. Meet your audience halfway.  Don’t force your audience to communicate in the way YOU want. Instead, find how they are already engaging, and always respond in a positive manner.

8. Save time through science and technology. Use an appropriate tool to streamline your publishing.

Keep in mind, this is just a high-level overview whereas the blog and webinar series goes in-depth  on how to execute these best practices one-by-one.  Do you have any tips you’d like to share?