The use of social media is seen as a key element of business development for many professionals. Yet many small business owners often see the time required to develop and maintain social media sites such as LinkedIn or Twitter as a major obstacle to their use.
How can you effectively manage all the different social media sites without getting “maxed-out”? Well, there’s lots of advice out there, but here’s 5 tips that I’d recommend:
- Have a plan
Very few businesses need to use everything that’s out there. So it’s important to think about what you want to achieve with social media. Do you want to attract new clients, keep existing clients informed, follow market trends or establish yourself as a bit of an expert in your field? Pick the social media mix that best suits your goals.
- Learn, learn, learn
It’s far better to use one or two social media formats and use them well, than have poor blanket coverage of everything that’s going. So if you want to use Twitter, for example, take some time to learn how to use it properly and get the most out of it. Look for blogs that can give you some hints and tips about improving your use of different sites such as http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/
- Dedicate time to participate in social media.
“That’s just the problem I don’t have time!” I can hear the screams. Random participation can send out a negative message to your audience, so set aside specific dedicated time to maintain the profiles you set up. This can be as little an 10 minutes twice a week or one morning a fortnight.
- A little (but often) goes a long way.
While many professional bloggers post as often as once a day, let’s face it, the rest of us humble mortals can only probably manage 2 or 3 posts a month. If your readers see a regular pattern in your activity they will continue to follow you, but there’s nothing worse than looking at a blog month after month only to find that there’s no new posts.
- Cross post where possible
You don’t have to spend hours posting different items on each site you use. It is often possible to adapt or reformat posts to several social media sites at the same time. There are some great tools out there - like Tweetdeck - which allow you to do this. Often a comment on your Facebook business page can direct readers to your blog etc. So if you have some good, regular content spread it round the sites you use, that way whatever form of social media your client is using they can pick up on it.
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