Over-saturating Content, On Social Media, Sabotages Your Brand's Reach
Can there really be such a thing as too much exposure for a piece of content on social media? Let’s Discuss It! Full disclosure I am not a big fan of over saturation of information in Social Media. Don’t get me wrong I believe the frequency rate of any delivered piece of content may need to be greater than 1 to bring awareness to the consumer.
When a brand targets the same followers with the same content it becomes a bit much. It reminds me of that old saying: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
I digress, and won’t fully declare the Myth of over-saturated post to be a trusted or busted myth instead I offer up these points:
Low engagement / Content fatigue
After engaging (like, comment, share or watch the video) with a single piece of content there often is no need to do it again. Posting the same content again will not reengage the same targeted audience. As a result, the second, third, fourth and so on and so on posts will decrease in reach and impact your content and overall social media presence negatively. Don’t be an enabler of content fatigue for your subscribers.
Competing with yourself
We have seen almost every combination there is of posting strategies. The most disturbing of the bunch is a posting strategy that competes with itself. The best example is when a brand runs an ad, targeted at their subscribers, and then turns around and post the same content on their timeline. Now, two posts. with the same content, are distributing to the same target audience. This for sure is a clear definition of oversaturation but that is not even the worst part about this. The algorithms of the social channels need to determine which content is best to display to the subscriber network (your followers). If a piece of content is overly posted one or more of the content elements will decline in performance. Don’t compete with yourself. Run an ad or a post or at minimum change up the content to avoid competition within your content.
Creates unfollows
Not everyone is well schooled on social media and often at times, subscribers may not fully understand why they keep seeing the same piece of content from your brand. This SPAM tactic of over saturation has a bad side-effect. An irritated subscriber may inadvertently or purposely unfollow you. Some may hide the post - which gives the posts a poor performance rank in the algorithm, while others may hide all future post from your brand which the digital slap back of leave me alone and finally the super frustrated will unfollow your brand. Don’t create unfollows by oversaturating content.
Lack of creativity
Is your post really just a one trick pony? Often at times, people are scrolling through social media so fast they barely notice your post the first time around. At some point, the targeted subscriber will either engage or ignore your content. If your brand is not changing up the message for your subscribers a lack of creativity is most likely the issue. Be creative and unique every time.
Disenfranchises Subscribers
If having two posts with the same content/creative happens to generate enough engagement to drive additional reach into your targeted an audience a new problem arises. Two posts would not share the same levels of engagement. How can this be a bad thing? People general engage with content that has several comments, likes or shares. When two posts, that are identical, run on a channel the comments, likes and shares become disapparated. Don’t allow your post to exclude subscribers from seeing and engaging with the conversation by creating multiple versions of a single piece of content targeted at the same audience on the same channel.
Overall you need to decide what works best for your brand/business. We recommend against oversaturation of content that is identical as we have seen the insight and analytical data that proves this is a losing battle. I won’t say the Myth is completely Trusted or Busted… let’s leave it as we had a healthy discussion on the topic. We Discussed It.
