Social media – how to manage your content and time

Over the last few weeks I have run a series on social media covering why it should be an important part of your marketing strategy, and explored Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for business. But it is a little like brussell sprouts – you know they are good for you, but you don’t like eating them.

So why do some people find it scary? Maybe it’s because they don’t understand the markets that use different social media platforms. Or maybe it’s because they think all anyone does is ‘play and waste time’ on social media (my wife who is a doctor calls it an “i-disorder”). Or maybe it’s because they feel that it is a total distraction from doing ‘real work’ or ‘real marketing’.

Social media is just another form of content marketing, Social media, however, is part of a marketing content plan, which should include a social media strategy and plan.

So how to you begin to manage your social media content?

1. Develop a social media strategy similar to a business-wide strategic plan.

2. Have a planning calendar. Each week put down the idea or topic for social media marketing for your business. Then allocate your ideas for each week by social media platform – which idea will be better executed via a tweet, Facebook or LinkedIn post?

3. Start collating the social media marketing content.

4. Schedule the tweets and posts using a social media scheduling app such as Hootsuite or Statusbrew. I have tweets and posts scheduled for weeks in advance. So even when I’m fly fishing and nowhere near a computer or internet access, I’m active on a social media.

5. Once a day, spend no more than 30 minutes checking activity on social media, contribute to the activity of your target market, interact with ‘centres of influence’ or those people who can boost your market credibility and access.

6. Once a week, spend time on content creation and reviewing your competitors – for no more than an hour!

7. Once a month, plan monetisation campaigns using social media – competitions, special offers, referrals or campaigns for future leads or prospects.

8. Once a month, analyse your social media strategy and monitor the success of the strategy and/or campaign to date.

Useful apps and tools

Generating, scheduling, and analysing and monitoring social media content can become all-consuming – if with a plan and a strategy as above. Some tools and apps specifically for using with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, to make your social media marketing easier, and that are available and free or cheap links are :-

BlogLovin – A tool for keeping up with blogs — a way to manage feeds. You can follow any blogger on any platform, whether or not they’re also signed up.

FatJoe – Outsourced link-building, SEO and content marketing agencies.

HashTagify – A hashtag search engine with data about hashtags.

Hootsuite – A social media management tool that allows users to schedule and post updates to any pages or profiles for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, WordPress and others from one place.

Infogram – An easy to use infographic and chart maker.

Likealyzer – Helps you to measure and analyse the potential and success rate of your Facebook Pages.

ManageFlitter – A web-based application that helps Twitter users gain insight into their Twitter account.

Statusbrew – A Social Media Management tool that lets you schedule content, do audience monitoring and brand management, all from one dashboard.

TweetDeck – A dashboard application to help you manage Twitter.

Twilert – A Twitter search tool that sends you email alerts of tweets containing your brand, product, service and keywords.

Visually – Handpick the best freelancers out there to help you produce high-impact infographics, videos, presentations, reports, eBooks and interactive web microsites.

Zapier – Zapier moves information between your web apps automatically.

I hope you have found this series on #social#media#marketing useful. I’d love to hear your feedback so connect with Byronvale Advisors and First5000 on twitter and our other social media accounts.