3 Strategies to Tame the Social Media Beast in Your Business

You walk into your office as the phone begins to ring. You answer the call as you click on your email icon and messages start pouring in. Half-way through your inbox, you realize you hadn’t scheduled anything on your social media sites  …again.  This is the third day in a row, and so you promise yourself that you will throw something up on your pages and profiles during the lunch hour, when things slow down a bit. The problem with this is… it never slows down. 

 

Effective content marketing takes more than throwing a post up now and then to let visitors know you are still around.  And for those who ask, “How many posts and tweets do in need to post each day, for it to be enough?” I say you are going about this all wrong. That’s like asking how many questions do I need to answer from my customers today, or how many times must I speak to guests in my hotel lobby today? First plan what you want to say and how you will answer common questions and then go out and start conversations.   

 

1. Take time each month and then each week to plan what content you want to get out.

Do you have events coming up that you need to let people know about? Is there a focus or theme for each week that you will tie your content into? Do you have a blog post to write or one that is written that you need to promote on all of your social sites? Will you run ads or a contest on one of your social sites? What questions do you want to ask your communities to gain insights into your products, services or industry? You’ve now got a worksheet full of content … Now it’s time to schedule.

 

2. Take time to schedule your content to drop at optimal times.

You know you are busy throughout the day, so scheduling your content ensures you will have well planned and well crafted content dropping at the optimal times for your communities.  Using a tool like Hootsuite, Buffer or other third party app, allows you to schedule content to Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and others.  You can schedule your content out for the week or for the entire month if you wanted to. Think about your audience as you determine the best time to post. if you are a realtor or restaurant and your audience is local, you know the time zone your customers are in.  If you are a financial consultant that has most of your clientele on the east coast, then you take that into consideration. If you are targeting those heading out to work, drop your content early…perhaps 6:30-7:00am for LinkedIn or 7:00 for Facebook and Twitter.  If your target audience is stay-at-home moms or dads, target that, finally got the kids out the door, sweet spot, time. Lunch time and early evening might be another ideal time for your content to gain viewership. Here is a great post that provides more data on the best time to post. Once the content is scheduled, you can get to your other tasks….but don’t forget to check in.

 

3. Make time to chat and walk-about each day

Just because you put content up on your social media sites, doesn’t mean you hang the “Gone Fishing” sign on the door. You need to make time each day to pop in, comment on the discussions that you started, or respond to questions.  Take a quick “walk-about” and scan the posts others have put up and leave your comments or likes.  Reply or ReTweet a few posts and then close it down before your day gets sucked away.  If you do this two or three times a day, it will not pile up and become a big chore that you have to get to at the end of each day.  This social bear will be tamed in no time.

 

Would you like a free template for the content strategy sheet that our team of community managers uses? Download your copy here and start taking the time to plan and be more strategic with your content.  You will start seeing greater results than the drive by, chuck-a-post approach.  I’m sure of it. 

 

 

If the social marketing beast has you running for cover, just scream…we have our ears to the social grapevine. You can call, tweet or email us too.

 

       @GinaSchreck   Gina@SocialKNX.com