Sometimes in order to truly and effectively reach your audience, you need to repeat the same message several times in your social network posts. Typically the people you’re trying to reach read things at different times of the day/week depending on when they spend time online browsing the networks they belong to. Given the large number of messages people are increasingly exposed to, if you have something important to share then you’re probably going to need to say it at least a couple times to ensure your message reaches everyone.

On the other hand, if you just say the same exact thing over and over again and don’t find different angles and approaches for getting your point across, you run the risk of turning off your audience.

There is certainly value in taking an approach similar to @guykawasaki on Twitter. He is a user noted for tweeting the same message multiple times. For instance, he recently posted about 10 toxic foods we love to eat and repeated the same message several times throughout the day. The benefit is that if you aren’t online the first time something is posted, you are still able to join the conversation when he posts about it again a few hours later. He has more than 200,000 followers, so his approach certainly hasn’t turned away a significant audience.

Guy has one way of doing it, but I prefer to take a different approach with my projects. While it’s important to get the main message across—and for businesses, I recognize that it’s going to be a similar message each time—I try to say things a little differently each time, ideally highlighting different parts of the overall message in the process.

When I’m working on messaging for my projects, I think about conversations I have with friends and family. I’m sure everyone who knows me can relate to me talking a few times about a favorite adventure. And I’m sure there are a few folks who’ve heard my same stories before. But there are times when my group of friends consist of people who have heard the story before and some who haven’t. I try to find a way to not bore my friends to death who have heard that particular story, while also inviting the new folks into the conversation. I like to keep my friends coming back for more, and I take the same approach with my social media communications.

Our Villageous project @CenPho on Twitter offers a few examples of how to say the same thing differently each time. To get users to a particular online location at a certain time for a contest, we repeated the same message a few times throughout the day but took a different approach with each message to keep things interesting and build excitement. Here are the messages we posted:

• You have 5 minutes to get to the intersection at Central/Thomas for a surprise! Tweet us a photo & you’ll win a prize!
• Only 45 minutes until the surprise at Central/Thomas…Snap a photo & we’ll give you a fab CenPho prize!
• Live or work near Central/Thomas? Get there by 4pm this afternoon for a fun surprise! Take a photo & tweet it to us & we’ll give u a prize!

This approach allowed us to create a dialog that gave people a reason to keep listening to what we have to say, while allowing us to repeat the message to reach different people in the @CenPho audience.

So how do you repeat yourself without repeating yourself?

Every day I observe quite a variety of methods that businesses use to get their message out into the community. Some business do a great job…and others could benefit from sharpening their approach. Here are a few common problems with the way some businesses communicate through social media, and my suggestions for how just a slight change in approach can help a business be more effective at promoting itself within an online community.

Using social media as a megaphone

Go out on a street corner and yell one way messages about your business through a megaphone at people walking by. You’ll probably notice people starting to avoid the corner you are yelling on; the same thing happens in social media.

It’s okay to announce your daily specials on Twitter or Facebook, but that shouldn’t be the only thing you talk about. Interact, ask questions, listen to conversations that your customers and potential customers are having and be a part of the conversation. Don’t be the person on the corner just yelling.

Put a little thought into it

The great thing about social media is anyone can do it. The bad thing about social media is anyone can do it. Why is this good and bad? It’s great because business can use these free platforms to talk about their business and interact with their customers. It’s bad because if you use social media just because you can and don’t think about it, you can actually cause quite a bit of damage to your image.

Think about how you represent yourself when a customer comes through your door…you welcome them, you are polite and you want to help them while leaving a good impression so they will come back and hopefully tell others about what a great experience they had with you and your business. The same should apply with your social media presence. Before you put your 16 year old nephew in charge of your social media presence because he knows how to use Facebook and you don’t, think about whether or not he’s the person you really want greeting your most important customers.

Treat those in the social media community like they are your customers, because well…they are your customers.

Don’t be rude

Really, don’t be rude, don’t get into arguments. You wouldn’t do that in front of a customer in your place of business, so don’t do it online either.