Getting together your social media plan seems to be a daunting task for most businesses, but it doesn’t have to be. Using a professional system or social media team can change the way you engage online with your customers, but for all the DIYers here are 5 stupid simple tips that will get you started down the correct path.
1. Use a Social Calendar
This seems to be the hardest part for most businesses trying to tackle social media on their own. Business owners and entrepreneurs tend to be “free thinkers” and when it comes to organization they can flat out suck. Having a simple calendar that you work on once a week or once a month can simplify the posting process. You don’t need any crazy social media tools to do this. Set up a simple calendar on Google Sheets with each of your top social profiles on it. Add items to the calendar as you find them and you will be all set up to post. If you are using Buffer, Hootsuite, or Edgar to streamline your posting they all have calendar functionality built in to their products at specific pricing tiers.
Want a free social calendar template on us? Click here.
2. Post on a Regular Basis
There are so many different social profiles it’s hard to figure out where to post what. Some sites recommend 2-3 Facebook posts per day, 4-6 Twitter posts a day, 1 LinkedIn post per day, and 1 Pinterest or Instagram post per day. These are all great guidelines, but the most important thing is you start a consistent cadence with your posting. Even if it’s one post a day, that’s good enough. As you grow so will your content. Just make sure you push out the content on all of your social channels. You never know where your customers are looking, so you need to make sure you hit all the major channels. Some of the top social management tools will even tell you the best time to post your content.
3. Content is Content
It doesn’t matter how great your content is when your starting out. Many people hold back posting to their social channels because they don’t think their content is up to par with their competition. The only way to improve is to push out your content and learn from you customers. They will give you their feedback through engagement, likes, and shares. As you start to push out more content you will get much better at creating it. Content creation is just like anything else. If you want to be the best it requires repetition and practice. Which is exactly what you will see here on our blog moving forward!
4. Sharing is Caring
Nobody wants to follow a business on social media just to hear about how great the business is. Unless you are constantly giving out free products or services, you need to make sure you social channel adds value to your followers. Talking about yourself all the time is just going to turn off your followers. Sharing valuable information with your followers is important. You need to give them free information that makes their lives better without expecting anything in return. Not everything is about your return on investment. Social media is a great place to create life long fans of your brand. If they feel they can go to you for the information they need in a pinch, then when it’s time to find or refer a brand you will be the first one in their mind.
5. Hashtag Spam
We’ve all seen those posts with 500 hashtags. Everyone wants likes and the easiest way to get those likes is to try and put your post in front of as many people as possible. The problem is that these posts start to look like spam. Topical hashtags have their place and definitely should be used, but you want to find quality followers. Make sure you are using hashtags that get you in front of followers that matter. A good rule of thumb is 2-10 hashtags at most for any post. One thing that can get lost in social media is quality over quantity. So many pages are compared based on how many likes they have. But I would much rather have a post with 100 likes from actual brand loyalists than a post with 500 likes from a bunch of spam accounts.
Dont be afraid to get out there converse! Creating an online brand that gets valuable engagement is attainable. To reach true engagement status you must provide incredible value around every corner possible. Right now, in 2016, the most valuable corners are those we call social media channels. Happy engaging!
