“Are you on <<insert social media platform name here>>? You HAVE TO BE there!”
How many times have you heard this from a customer, colleague, vendor, an industry publication, or even your teenager when it comes to marketing your business? We know social media is where customers are. They are there asking friends for recommendations, researching products and services, discovering new products and companies and they are doing it all before we even know they are potential customers. Social media is such an important factor, Google is now using your your social media engagement as a factor in calculating your page rank score. This means that quality can win over quantity.
The goal is to have active profiles on all the social media platforms; the reality is that being on 3-4 platforms with engaging, active and well maintained accounts is better than having empty or sporadic accounts on every platform just to have a presence. This can seem like an overwhelming and time consuming task, however, it is possible, even for the one person business. Here are a few tips to help you wrangle your social media accounts and get them producing for you!
Create a social media/content plan. Spending time to map out your goals and strategies up front will give you a road map for what and when to post content to your platforms. This can be as detailed or generic as you please as long as it gives you a direction. When you are struggling for content, go back to your plan for clarity on the goals your are trying to achieve.
Schedule your social media time into your work day. By breaking down the tasks into smaller steps you can make a bigger impact without having to sit and watch the accounts constantly. For instance, schedule a short block to answer reviews or questions posted to your pages and do only that during that time. Schedule a block during your fan base’s most active times to monitor feeds, monitor news and trends, and join any conversations that are relevant to your product or business. Schedule another block answer comments, and another to plan and schedule tomorrow’s posts. By focusing on one goal during the block you will avoid the “Where do I start?” problem as well as avoid getting sidetracked or overwhelmed.
At a loss for what to post? Create a general theme schedule. For instance, every Monday is crowdsource day where you post reviews, stories, and pictures that you have collected from your community. Tuesday is new product day when you highlight new or improved products or services in some way and so on. These do not have to be announced themes, just a general schedule so that you have basic guide with an array of material to choose from without having to reinvent the wheel every week.
Set reasonable goals for yourself. Start small, and build. Maybe you set a goal to post 3 statuses a week at first. As you become more comfortable raise the goal or add another platform to the mix.
Find a tool that works for you to save time and energy. A social media dashboard where you can post, schedule, review analytics, and curate content in one place for many platforms will encourage you to spread the effort around to your many accounts and save you time.
Use your analytics. Each platform will provide you with information about each post such as reach, shares and likes. Repeat what works, stop doing what doesn’t! It’s that simple. Post what your fan base interacts with the most, at the times they interact the most, for the biggest impact!
Following these tips will get you managing multiple social media accounts in no time, positively affecting your off-site SEO and your search page rank.