Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
On the second day of social media week, Ashkahn and Graham ask Derek how often float centers should post as well as what makes good content.
Derek lays out practical tips for how to schedule your social media (DON’T AUTOMATE), as well as what makes a good post. Facebook has several algorithms to limit your reach depending on the post so it’s important to avoid certain keywords and post topics to reach the broadest audience without paying for it.
Show Resources
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: Alright, hey, welcome everyone.
Graham: Hey there, I wonder who that handsome man was. Oh well, back to our questions.
Ashkahn: So, my name is Ashkahn.
Graham: I’m Graham.
Ashkahn: And we have a special guest with us here today. Derek, Derek is with us. We’re doing a week of some built up social media questions we’ve had submitted over time, and Derek is with us from Float On.
Graham: And yeah if you like this episode go to yesterday’s, cause you’ll get a lot more of him. And tomorrow’s too if you’re in far enough the future.
Ashkahn: Yeah or if you’re psychic then …
Graham: Today’s question is: “How much should I be putting out on my different social media platforms and what makes good content for them?” Nice, nice bite size question there.
Derek: So how often they should be making posts?
Ashkahn: How often they should be making posts?
Ashkahn: The frequency in which they should post and what makes good content for posting.
Graham: On the different platforms.
Derek: Okay so let’s attack the frequency.
Graham: But what are the platforms?
Derek: Well okay
Graham: Furbook.
Ashkahn: Derek just told us about a social media platform called Furbook.
Derek: Furbook. It’s because my cat told me about it. It’s how it apparently talked to Jordan’s cat to know that only drink out of running faucets.
Graham: Alright Furbook, good.
Ashkahn: Furbook.
Graham: So, if you accept cats in your Float Center, which I would say about ninety percent of people do.
Derek: Watch the pop-up of marketers saying they’re Furbook experts come out all of a sudden.
So, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
Ashkahn: We’re up to three now.
Derek: Those are the three we’re more involved in than what’s out there. There’s Snapchat, some people use Snapchat, which I think is flawed for business. I can get into that, you laugh but Snapchat kind of like with Instagram stories is fleeting media, right? So, you put all this effort to post something and then it’s gone a day later. And then if people miss it, they don’t get to see it and then all that effort is wasted, it’s gone forever.
Ashkahn: But where else do we post sexy pictures of our float tanks? Like I feel like that Snapchat is the appropriate venue for that.
Derek: For Furbook.
Graham: Alright so pretty much for right now we’re talking about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, we’ll call it the “big three” or something of social media?
Derek: We’ll go with those three for now, for sure.
Graham: Okay, are there other honorable mentions or things we won’t talk about like other social media things besides Snapchat and Furbook.
Derek: I mean if you have a heavy corporate audience, maybe LinkedIn. Like if you’re going for corporate accounts and if you have like a wellness program with other companies.
Graham: I guess YouTube?
Derek: YouTube would be great, I think the Float industry in general needs more video content so that would be good to see pop up.
Graham: But harder to maintain.
Derek: You have to be an expert, too.
Ashkahn: It’s hard to get good video content.
Graham: So, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. How frequently should people be posting on those three?
Derek: You have to think of the user habits of those platforms. And also, think of those platforms in general. Facebook has an algorithm and Instagram has an algorithm that if you post too frequently, they quiet you down. Twitter has a similar algorithm but it’s not as punishing as Facebook and Instagram. So for Twitter, I post more frequently. For Twitter, I can go up to five times a day because if you’re following 300 people on Twitter, which is not that many people to follow, a Tweet gets pushed so far down the timeline in 15 minutes it’s hardly ever seen again. So you can Tweet multiple times a day.
Graham: That said, how much do we do? What’s a good number to get at if you’re trying to get into it?
Derek: Shoot for one a day on Twitter. And often times you can repurpose content. And we’ll get into that a little bit later. But for Twitter, once a day. If you can pair that a different time of day, and we’ll talk about that a little bit too. Instagram – once a day, once every couple of days is good. Facebook – three to four times a week. Which is a shocking number when I say that to people because sometimes people feel that they should post twice a day.
Graham: So less on Facebook then?
Derek: Less on Facebook.
Graham: Interesting.
Derek: There is a couple of reasons for that. I cherish the Facebook audience more than I do the other platforms I think because Facebook algorithm is so testy that I don’t want to do anything that pisses it off. And so what can piss it off is posting to frequently. And having, again, I’m talking in the morning, I’m talking in the evening, I’m showing you this article, I’m showing you that article. You can’t possibly have that much unique things to say every single day. So Facebook knows that. Especially if your fans don’t have the time on Facebook to read five minute articles twice a day about floating. So.
Graham: I have noticed that too. If we have two important things to say during a single day, we’ll say the first important one on Facebook and get a bunch of attention for it and we’ll say the second important and hardly anyone is paying attention at that point. And that’s probably Facebook limiting how much reach it has since we already reached a good size that day. “Hey, you got your allocation. No more soup!”
Derek: Yeah, no more soup. And it could be sometimes the time of the day. We’re just not a heavy evening audience so there could be some factors in that. But I do not that if you post twice a day, one of those two posts is going to get throttled. So, I say let’s only speak when we have something interesting to say on Facebook.
Graham: So, like once a month in our case.
Derek: That’s pushing it but. I go back to three to four times a week.
Graham: That’s all three. We hit it.
Ashkahn: The other part of the question is what makes good content? That’s a big question.
Graham: That’s a quick one. One minute – go.
Derek: Engaging, entertaining, informative. Any one of those combinations of things. So informative – it could be informing people of something happening at your center. Educational – it could be informing them about floating. Entertaining – it could be something fun that could be happening around the shop. At this moment, what would be good entertaining content is what Graham and Ashkahn are doing behind the microphone. So, there just kind of pantomiming, doing puppet arms, and sometimes that personality is great on social media.
Graham: It’s weird to have someone reporting on our activities. Usually, we just do this in here and no one knows about it.
Derek: I am mister fourth wall. I will break down anything I see here.
Ashkahn: What I think you hear a lot about posting stuff that is personable and takes away that veil of being a faceless corporation, which I think is good. What I think it is a little bit harder to find out just from the casual, “I’m trying to run my Facebook account is a small business owner perspective”, is a little bit more of the technical stuff. We talked about this a little bit in the last episode. But Facebook, and to an extent the other platforms as well, depending on literally what you are posting as content or exactly how much text or the length of things will mess with the algorithms and change the reach that your receiving. Those things change all the time. They are constantly trying to adjust them. But are there some more universal truths? Like with SEO things change all the time too but you still always want to have keywords and things linking back to you. There are just some fundamentals of it that I think don’t change as often or will be there for a long time. Is there similar stuff like that with Facebook and some of the other platforms.
Derek: So whatever is consistent to your – here’s a marketing term for you – “brand voice”. So if you’re fun and playful and whimsical, the words on the page should be fun and whimsical and playful. The photos you share should be fun and whimsical and playful. There was a whole period of time where we just posted rubber duckies of different sorts that were placed all around Float On on our page. And people loved it because there were randomly stashed rubber duckies all around Float On. It was kind of like this Easter Egg hunt.
Ashkahn: I was in our shop last night and I was trying to find something in our back storage room and I came across a basket of just full of different rubber duckies that I had never seen before. And it was labeled “rubber duckies”. I was like what’s that basket.
Graham: Someone obviously doesn’t follow our own Facebook page.
Derek: And that’s why you have me to run it. So, I actually brought a rubber ducky back from St. Louis that I know we didn’t have so I’m going to put that in the shop. It’s a thing now.
Graham: Add it to the flock
Derek: It’s a thing now. That kind of fun stuff. There was a great post that people loved when maybe some employee that shall remain nameless – but you can go see it on Facebook – put hand soap in the dishwasher. And all of sudden there was suds all over the back room and then frantically trying to clean it up. And another keen employee took the picture on their cell phone and sent it to me. And it was great content.
Graham: They had like bubble beards and stuff. That was actually to date still one of the best organic pieces of content we’ve put out I think.
Derek: Yeah. So that type of stuff. What that does is it breaks down your corporate face and people realize it’s just a business ran by people who are having fun, doing a thing they love and just wanted to share it with you.
Graham: What I’m hearing is that if you have a problem with seeming to corporate, you should hire some actors to play your children and take photos of you with them, playing with bubbles.
Derek: Yeah, of course. Bubbles, and rubber duckies.
Graham: Great. I think the audience can take that away.
Derek: Exactly. It’s actionable.
Ashkahn: What about the more technical side of it. Is there a benefit to posting images of a text, or of videos. What, in terms of just the stuff that might not be as intuitive to be people from the beginning.
Derek: This is a moving target that changes. What could be important now in Facebook’s eyes, could be not important later. As far as the technical details, anything that keeps people on the Facebook platform is preferred by Facebook. Anything taking them to another website.
Ashkahn: That’s not surprising.
Derek: While there is a browser that’s in Facebook and you can hit a button and go straight back to Facebook, it’s still giving them a chance to go deeper in to other sites than Facebook. Facebook has ads, and they want to show you ads.
Ashkahn: It does seem like Facebook is trying to create their own internal internet. They have their own video platform. They host images. They have their own marketplace where you can sell things.
Derek: They are really hot on their video platform. They want a lot of video content. Anything that can get shown that is uploaded straight to Facebook is a lot better than sharing a YouTube or a Vimeo link.
Graham: Again, that seems unlikely to go anywhere. Because I see Facebook selfishly want that, it is unlikely to go anywhere. I see Facebook selfishly wanting to keep they audience on their site for as long as possible, forever. Right.
Derek: When it comes to when you do have to share something that is not as favorable, like a an external link, there is some technical things you can do. I touched about this in the last episode but you don’t just say “here’s a great article on floating.” You say something that really can pull on those heartstrings linked in the article or a great quote. I sometimes like to pick the best line out of an article and just share that in quotes. With no other context other than its obviously the article, and you can click through, and you can read it. Anything that really pulls people into your world. And while it’s Facebook’s world, you want them to understand more about floating.
Graham: I’ve got another question for you. This is the first part of the question we’re answering so it’s not all my question, I can’t take full credit. Twitter once a day. Instagram is once every day to two days. Facebook is once every two days for posting roughly. If you’re dropping the ball, and you’re not getting out a post a day for Twitter, or etc. for the other platforms, is there an amount where you’re not posting very much where they then start to penalize you. What’s the minimum, assuming you really don’t have that much time, that you should be getting out on each of these things?
Derek: I would say at least for Facebook, twice a week. You don’t want to go once a week or once every two weeks really posting.
Graham: Okay. And then for Twitter and Instagram, about the same?
Derek: Twitter is again one of the more forgiving. Even though the have an algorithm, it’s relatively new. If it’s good content, if it’s real time content, not just the same article you’re sharing over and over and over again, it will help you to share that probably once a day. Twitter you can actually schedule Twitter really easily. I would schedule Twitter before I would schedule anything else. And that’s going in to the technical side. What makes good content. Don’t schedule on Facebook. Even though it gives you the ability. And while there are some abilities like using Hootsuite to schedule on Instagram, don’t schedule on Instagram. Facebook wants to reward those people who are spending time on their platform. That goes two ways. You as a content producer, if you’re doing it natively through either the Facebook app, or even better the desktop version where there is more ads, posting natively through the actual Facebook page is a lot better as far as reach goes.
Graham: Let’s say I’m active on Twitter and I post something for my Float Center once a week. Am I messing up? Are they going to penalize me or show it to less people for the fact that I’m not posting every single day on Twitter.
Derek: I haven’t seen it much on Twitter. You can actually repurpose content. You can take a Facebook post today and make it a Tweet tomorrow. You can make an Instagram post tomorrow and make it a Tweet the day after that. Between Facebook and Instagram, you should always have at least a Tweet.
Graham: Okay. Pretty much a couple times a week for all platforms is what you’re saying at a minimum.
Derek: Yeah. Again, only post things that are worth saying.
Graham: But you should have something to say at least twice a week.
Ashkahn: And if you fall behind you can just take your 12 Facebook posts and put them out all at once. That will catch up I think right.
Graham: Yup. Grab your Furbook posts. Release those. Repurpose them.
Derek: Furbook’s the new hotness.
Ashkahn: That seems like a good place to stop. Go check our Furbook, furbook.com
Graham: If you have any other questions go to Furbook.com/dailysolutionspodcast
Derek: I don’t know if you want to Google Furbook.com
Graham: Go to Floattanksolutions.com/podcasts. Send in your own questions. They’ll be great. You guys have great questions. Go send them. Don’t be so shy. And we will talk to you tomorrow.
Derek: Bye
Ashkahn: See ya.
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The Float Tour Blog – Issue #24
Alberta is often called the Texas of Canada. Part large oil industry, part cattle country.
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At the base of the Rocky Mountains, replete with an Olympic Stadium, Calgary is a world-class destination for winter sports. The float community developed here similarly to Edmonton – there wasn’t anything nearby except for one or two residential float tanks, and then, in a short period of time, several centers opened all at once. Instead of competing, they’ve decided to work together and have developed one of the tightest knit float communities we’ve seen. They even have monthly Float Dinners, much like we do with the float centers in Portland. They don’t keep meeting minutes, so it’s hard to determine what they talk about at these dinners; my guess would be salt, the effects of salt on various substances, and how salty salt damage can make someone salty.
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