See last week’s blog post for part 1
Timing, Timing, Timing
Ideally you want to be posting at the time when the maximum numbers of your followers are looking at social media. For many businesses that will likely be in mornings from Monday through Friday although this does depend on your industry and audience – I can’t imagine night shift workers are focusing on business social media in the morning. It can be tricky to work out the times, which is where Google analytics and the Social Analytics produced by the sites themselves can assist.
Maintain and Adapt
Don’t forget to schedule maintenance time. Being evolving and flexible entities, social media sites change their buttons, features and APIs frequently. Adding a calendar reminder to test all buttons, plugins and other social features of your site every few months will be beneficial. This includes seeing if there are new things that you could be doing with your blog, website or on the social media sites themselves. Spend some time to see what each of your posts looks like to your followers, it’s well and good to have a pretty article but if the twitter link is garbled then no one will ever read it.
Delegate and Automate
This sounds like a bit of a cop-out, but it is important for CEOs’ and managers to delegate certain tasks. It is also vital that in doing so, there are clear guidelines, objectives and plans for how to deal with issues or opportunities.
Automating can be extremely beneficial, if it is used to save time and not to annoy your followers. There are services that allow you to schedule social media posts for example, but be careful not to get over-zealous and schedule a post every 20min.
Enthusiasm is Excellent
There will probably be at least one avid Twitter, Instagram or Facebook user in your office, if you are lucky then they will already be in a position that makes sense to include social media aspects. If you can delegate these responsibilities to someone who already understands the platforms from a users perspective then you will be better off. In saying this, do not pull somebody from Accounts over just because they spend every waking hour (non-work hopefully) on Facebook or Instagram. This applies if you are thinking of hiring someone, excitement should be something you look for in candidates.
Outsource — Carefully
Outsourcing your social media tasks, like any other business function, can save time and money but only if done properly. Do not assume that you can outsource everything, you will likely still need to provide the raw materials for posts, and still monitor everything. Remember, they may be good at social media, but will not know your business.
Outsourcing small things such as email newsletters and posting articles can be beneficial whilst allowing someone in your organization to create the material and manage the release schedule and company image
Some information sourced from: smallbiztrends.com
