Social media can take over your life. If you have a teenager in the house you’ll have noticed their nose is permanently glued to their phone to keep up with what’s going on. Try and get them to tidy their room, clear the table or any other chore and they almost have to be surgically removed from their mobile!
As a business owner it can be just as bad. You know that it’s a valuable way to engage with customers and potential clients, but does that mean you have to be on it all day?
No – you just need a bit of organisation.
There are two aspects to social media – broadcast and engagement. They’re both important too.
Broadcast
This covers the messages you want to get out to people. It can include:
- Blogs
- Articles
- Newsletters and email campaigns
- Updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram
- Video material for social media sites and YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
You can schedule some of this and can pick up any comments or responses at any time. Although I recommend checking all your social media platforms (and email) at least once a day.
Engagement
This is about building a community and getting to know your audience and what they want. This does need to be done at the time – but if you train your audience, you can choose when.
This might include a scheduled Q&A session on Twitter, a Facebook live session at a scheduled time, a webinar using Zoom or GoToMeeting or one of the other online platforms. If people get to know that you’ll be available at specific times they’ll turn up – and the easiest way to do that is to tell them!
- A sticky post on your Facebook Page saying you’ll be live on Thursdays at 5pm or Monday between 12-2pm.
- A note on your LinkedIn summary telling people where they can find you live.
- A handful of posts on Twitter counting down to you going live for Q&A (and a hashtag to make finding you easy).
It takes a bit of planning, but it is worthwhile.
Joining up the dots
When you post a blog, share the link on your social media platforms. Use the item as the lead in your next newsletter or split it into three and create an email campaign that runs for three days – with your call to action on the end.
Make sure the subject is something that your target audience are interested in – and offer to go live on Facebook to answer any questions on a specific date/time. Include that in the blog as a footnote too.
You might want to run a short Facebook ad campaign to promote this.
The more planning you do about what you blog about, post about, talk about, email about – the easier it will all get!
