The 3 C’s of Social Content – What Are They and Why Should They Matter To You?
While browsing around on my new Google Currents app on my phone I stumbled upon an awesome article by a gentleman by the name of Simon Salt, and he was talking about the different types of social content. I highly recommend that you take a look at his article here.
What really struck me about the content in this article is the fact that social media is starting to become more and more important as to how we as online entrepreneurs reach our target audience. Even the search engines are starting to take social buzz more and more into account when it comes to ranking sites on the front page of their services. Ignoring this fact is guaranteed to kill your business, or at the very least slow growth down almost to a grinding halt. So what are these methods of social content and how can we use them to our advantage?
The First “C” of Social Content: Creation
The technical description of this is having 100% unique content, essentially stuff that has never been written about before, ever. This isn’t just the words being original, but also theĀ emotionĀ or feelings that your content is trying to evoke. You may even be working to adapt the same message for a different audience, but it still would not count as being original.
Examples that would count would be stories directly derived from personal experiences. No one can evoke an emotion from a personal event quite like you can. Say you had just had, or had been with someone who had, a long battle with an addiction and they pulled themselves through, you could tell that story and evoke a feeling that is truly unique to you.
The Second “C” of Social Content: Curation
Simply put, this is the sharing of other people’s content. Many sites that are designed for this purpose also have their own ways of doing this. For instance Twitter, being that you are limited to 140 character posts, tends to focus on headlines; Pinterest deals almost solely on pictures; and Facebook & Google+ tend to be a combination of the two. For your materials to get the best results from the type of curation you’re going for you need to know specifically what sites are best for each different type, like the ones that were just listed previously, and tailor your content accordingly. Think, how can you best catch people’s eye in this particular environment?
The Third “C” of Social Content: Cultivation
This is when someone who posts a piece of content to a social networking site that focuses on a specific niche to attract or nurture an audience. Here the content plays somewhat less of a role than the frequency of the posts, time of day of said posts, imagery, density, etc. From my understanding from this part of Mr. Salt’s article (I could be wrong here) is that different demographics are only free to look at your content at certain times of the day. For Twitter in general in the mornings between 9:00 – 11:00 AM and in the evenings between 6:00 – 9:00 PM, after people come home and wind down from work, is where you will get the most eyes on your content, as well as having people having the time to actually devote to looking at your content.
My Final Thoughts on the 3 “C’s” of Social Content
At the end of the article I referred to at the beginning of this one, Mr. Salt asks which type of social content do you produce. There is certainly no real right or wrong answer in which is better or worse, as they each have their strengths. However, what if you could create and share your content using all 3 of these methods? Granted that technically with the part on Creation and the other 2 can’t coexist, most content (just like this article) is inspired by outside pieces of work. The best way to get the most creativity out of your own content that you want to share is to share your personal point of view on that topic. This is one of the best ways (hell, it’s almost a requirement these days) to get your content shared with the masses as it shows you have experienced what the original content was talking about from your own unique point of view.
If you take that part of Creation in your content, then mix it with effectively placing your content in the right places, at the right time, in the right way, then you have the makings of a massively viral piece of work. And if you play your cards right, you are on your way to a massive, loyal audience as long as you stay consistent with your communication and take care of your raving fans.
If you are looking for more, and more in-depth, information on how to create massively viral social content 100% free, click here to take a look.

