Managing Your Social Media Some Tips

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Social Media plays an important part in most marketing and communication strategies these days.  The key to using it successfully to market your business is to post regularly and to try and actively engage with your audience.  The challenge for most SME’s is how you resource this important element of your business.
 
If you are lucky enough to have a marketing department the chances are they have this side of your business under control.  But what if you don’t?  How can you make sure you are doing your business justice on Social Media.  Industry experts say that ideally you should aim to post to your blog once a week, post to your Facebook page once a day and to Tweet up to 5 times a day.  This does of course depend on who your target audience is and what you wish to achieve by using Social Media. 
 
The key to achieving this is of course to plan ahead and there are lots of online tools, many of them free that can help you schedule your online activity. If you dedicate 1-2 hours per week to this side of your business you will be amazed at what you can do. 
 
Content Calendar
The first thing you will need to do is put together a content calendar as this will help you to keep track of what you’re posting where and when.  Start by thinking about the key times of year for your business, and create posts about that, then look for topical or interesting articles that might be relevant to your audience, you might also like to comment on particular news issues if appropriate.
 
Hootsuite – www.hoosuite.com
Allows you to handle all your Social Media in one place, you can manage three of your profiles for free, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linked In.  You can schedule posts for each account quickly and easily and monitor all other activity for your accounts here.  Depending on your business needs you might find their professional version useful as it also includes various measurement tools to help you track how your posts are performing.  
 
Facebook
Facebook’s scheduler tool allows you to forward plan your posts up to 5 months in advance.  Your planned posts can be reviewed quickly and easily using the scheduled post tool and colleagues can also review the posts here too.
 
Tweetdeck – www.tweetdeck.twitter.com
Using Tweetdeck you can manage all your Twitter interactions.  It is also possibly to manage several twitter profiles from the same Tweetdeck account. 
 
Feedly – www.feedly.com
If you want to find online content then this is a great starting point.  You can easily search for articles on particular subjects and keep them to use as and when you need them. 
Don’t forget you can also Bookmark interesting web pages and content in your web browser so that you can return to them at a later date.  
 
Canva – www.canva.com
If you need to create images but don’t have access to a designer then this website is a brilliant starting point.  It will also help you create images that are perfectly sized for use on Facebook and Twitter.
 
So don’t be scared of Social Media, set aside some time each week to it and you’ll soon have a flourishing online community.   
 
If Social Media is not your thing and you’d like some help then give me a call on 01234 823700 or email info@shrewdpr.co.uk
 
#socialmedia #contentmanagement