Social Media Success

Follow these 5 steps for social media management success.

Does social media management play a role in your company’s marketing plan? It’s a key element for business success! But how do you go about managing various social channels for your company? It takes more than just visiting Facebook once in a while and posting a link here and there. Get serious about social media management by following these 5 steps!

5 Steps to Social Media Management Success

Step 1: Decide how frequently you’re going to post. It’s important that you set a realistic goal for yourself, but keep in mind the best scheduling practices for the different platforms. For example, you should post on Twitter more frequently, at least 3-5 times a day, and LinkedIn does better during the work week than on the weekends.

If you know multiple posts a day is too much for you to take on, we recommend at least 1 update per day for each social media channel you have set up for your business. Regardless of how often you update your social networks, remember the 80/20 rule: 20 percent of your updates can be self-promotional and the other 80 percent should provide something of value to your followers.

Step 2: Research hashtags and keywords. Before you start writing updates, it’s important to know what words you want to include in your posts so you’re more visible to potential followers. A great idea is to regularly research what’s trending on the different networks so you can incorporate the popular hashtags that are a natural fit with your business. It takes some time and diligence, but it’s worth it!

Step 3: Consider upcoming holidays. Keep the time of year in mind and think about any holidays coming up that you want to mention, such as the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving or Labor Day. Even if your business isn’t directly tied to a national event, posting an update about it is a fantastic way to add a human touch and engage with your followers.

Step 4: Write your updates & schedule them out. Once you know what words you want to include and any noteworthy dates you want to mention, start writing your updates! To make the task of social media management easier, we recommend sitting down and writing a week’s worth of updates at a time. This will save you from worrying about coming up with new content every single day. Once you’ve taken the time to write them out, you can use a program like HootSuite to schedule them, leaving you with one less thing to worry about!

Step 5: Monitor for engagement with followers. The last step is important not to forget about: monitor your social media networks for engagement! If someone asks a question or leaves a comment on your social media page, you want to answer him or her quickly. In general, customers expect a response within an hour when they reach out to you on one of your social sites. Remember, a key element of social media is SOCIAL – it’s all about interacting with your followers!

Do you have any additional social media management tips or tricks that have worked well for you? Share them in the comments below!