For years now, marketers have been talking about building and maintaining your social presence. There’s a great reason for this. The whole point of social marketing is that it helps to develop and grow your brand. By reaching out to current customers and clients, you help to strengthen existing relationships. Alternatively, by reaching out to potential clients and customers, you can help to educate them on the goods or services you offer. It all comes down to visibility. Are you being seen and heard by current and future clients?

Social Streams

Your social streams help to make this happen. Your streams are the go-to source for brand information, helpful tips, or other content that can offer value. Your streams will include any social media output that you create and send out to your audience. Do you have a Facebook Page that you post to regularly? How about an Instagram or Pinterest account where you are sharing pics of your latest products? How about Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media outlet? That’s great! Even your blog may be considered a social media outlet if it is all about having a conversation with your audience. Each one of these outlets is considered social media streams.

Now, think about streams in the natural world… do they run perfectly parallel, never crossing, or can they crisscross in multiple places? Little hint: it’s a rhetorical question. Streams can cross endlessly, merging with one another, sometimes ending abruptly and other times popping up unexpectedly. Social streams can behave in just the same manner. Your streams may run parallel for a time, may cross, may end or begin, and this is a good thing. It can help keep your audience engaged. The trouble comes in when your social streams get lost in a river of content.

Competing Streams

Have you ever been in a room where multiple conversations are going on at the same time? Listen closely. As the conversations continue they will often increase in volume. The louder the conversations, the easier it is to lose your listeners. It’s the same issue with your social media streams. As more and more conversations hit the web, the easier it is to lose your stream in the river of content. The trouble is that this can even happen when your content is going up against that produced by non-competition. It’s a matter of the number of conversations going on – the volume of content being produced.

Staying Relevant In A Social Ocean

The Big Question is how do you stay relevant when you’re facing an ocean of social content? How do you bring awareness to YOUR brand on social networks full of social conversations each of which could steer clients away? If only it were as easy to say “do this one thing” or “just say this”, but it’s not. There are however several things you can do to help stay relevant in an increasingly noisy socially active world. Our next post will address some of the steps you can take in order to help your brand remain socially relevant and keep the conversations manageable with your target audiences. Stay tuned!