7 Tips for Delivering Time-Sensitive Information on Social Media

How often do you post on your brand’s social media stories? Do you truly consider the purpose of your brand’s time-sensitive content? Using expert tips and tricks from the Met Office’s Ross Middleham’s fantastic SocialDay session, here’s a quick-fire guide to delivering time-sensitive information on social media.

What is time-sensitive content?

Time-sensitive information is content that has a short lifespan and will most likely become less useful and/or relevant with time. Time-sensitive content is most commonly found in formats like social media stories (e.g. Instagram stories, Facebook stories, etc.). Delivering this type of content is about reading the room, seeing what people are talking about, and delivering quick, high-reach content to your audience. 

You can watch Ross’ SocialDay session on demand when you join the SocialDay Club

7 top tips for delivering time-sensitive information on social media

As the Content and Social Lead at the Met Office, the UK’s weather forecasting and services organisation, Ross Middleham certainly knows a thing or two about delivering time-sensitive information on social media. Here’s seven of the endless expert tips his session gave us...

1. Identify your purpose

In order to deliver useful and effective time-sensitive content on social media, you first have to identify the purpose of your brand’s content. What need are you fulfilling in your audience? What service is your content offering? Once you understand this, you can then ensure that you’re fulfilling your brand’s fullest potential and providing supportive and trustworthy content which educates people, sparks conversation, and meets the demands of your audience.

2. Create a range of content types

Time-sensitive information is often content that is required rather than being there for solely entertainment purposes, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be engaging your audience. In order to make time-sensitive content engaging, it’s important to use a range of content types. You could include blogs, infographics, short-form videos, and gifs alongside more traditional social media content like images and long-form videos. 

3. Make it multi-platform

Once you’ve diversified your content types, make sure that you tailor the content to each platform, for example cutting long-form YouTube videos down to shorter highlights videos for Twitter and Instagram. Ensuring that the time-sensitive content you produce works on a multi-platform level will allow your brand to reach your existing audience on whatever platform they may be on, as well as expand your reach to new audiences and demographics. 

4. Be consistent

Experimenting with new content styles and tailoring content to each platform can be time-consuming. To speed up the process, ensure consistency, and let customers know who your brand is straight away, ensure that you have strong branding and formats in place for content creators to use. Being consistent also means posting regularly to make sure your audience knows what to expect, as well as keeping your message consistent across platforms to create a connected experience for your audience and ensure that they receive accurate information.

5. Make sure it’s mobile-ready

Ross’ motto: if it doesn’t work on mobile, it just doesn’t work. Mobile makes up around half of all web traffic, so making sure that all of the content you create is tried and tested in mobile formats is an essential part of your brand’s digital success.

6. Syndicate and collaborate

Syndication is the sale or licensing of material for publication or broadcasting to multiple news or television services. Though not right for all brands, Ross described how the Met Office sends a twice-daily email to over 45 news and media companies, allowing them to reach a range of audiences with their useful content. Collaborating with other brands and companies is also a great way of sharing ideas and perspectives as well as understanding other brands’ problems and challenges. Of course, collaboration with brands and, more recently, influencers presents the opportunity to reach new demographics and communities that will build on and enhance your existing audience.

You can watch Ross’ SocialDay session on demand when you join the SocialDay Club

7. Move with the times

Moving with the times is crucial to succeeding in such a saturated social media market. Ross’ advice? Keep your eyes open and be accepting and agile when it comes to change. Whether that’s monitoring emerging platforms like TikTok, keeping track of the changing ways that customers are consuming content, or reviewing how your customers are preferring to be engaged with, agility is key to a successful, future-proofed digital strategy. For example, with more platforms including ‘compassionate search’ features like Pinterest, a rise of closed communities, and a greater demand for brand transparency, there is a clear demand and movement towards using social for good. Identifying where your brand fits into the marketplace (something that will inevitably shift and change over time) will help to ensure that you stay relevant in the face of so much new competition.

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