Social Media 101

Keeping up with your social media can be overwhelming.  It takes dedication and constant attention, yes, but there are shortcuts. And once you learn them, keeping up with your social media will be like brushing your teeth, you can check on it once in the morning and once at night and and every once in awhile you will do a thorough flossing.

I recently attended a seminar on social media put on by Josh Ochs of MediaLeaders.com.  He made it look so easy.  Well, I have been putting his notes to a test with my clients sites that I maintain, and it all is very logical.  By the way, I am only now getting to my own social media revamping, and its been two months, so don't be too hard on yourself.  At least you are now thinking about what you have to do by reading this blog :)

Here's some tips I learned:

1) At the bottom of your emails add in your URL's to your FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Blog. For example:  "Find me on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/tracybalsz".  Always use the "http://" in the description as this will add an automatic hyperlink.

2) Messaging:  Pre-plan your messaging for a week or a month in advance.  Always ask yourself what does your customer Love/Hate/Fear/Annoy/Worst Enemy/Best Friend/Positive Force or Belief/Negative Force or Belief/Hero and what social networks are they on?  Create five answers to each question above and this will provide content for your messaging.

3) Best to form your messaging in 140 characters or less so that it will work on Twitter and Facebook alike.  Include an image, question, call to action or link on every post.  Keep messaging "light, bright, and polite".  Best to post galleries of pics, not just one.  They tend to be viewed more often.

4) How often should you post?  Facebook once per day.  Check back 30 minutes after a post to see if you need to answer any comments.  Twitter you should post several times a day.

Sample:

                                               i.     830A – Quote

                                              ii.     930A – Ask general questions for engagement (no promotion)

                                            iii.     1030A - Retweet answer include @sign

                                            iv.     1230P – Retweet something light, bright and polite from other users

                                              v.     130P – Ask a specific question about something new and link to your site

                                            vi.     330P – repeat the morning quote for afternoon followers

                                           vii.     530P – repeat general question for afternoon followers

5) Need more education:

http://www.medialeaders.com has a fantastic training program that you can do at your own pace, for a monthly fee.  And it is always being updated with new, trending info.

Sign up for emails from Hubspot.com.  A great blog for some fantastic information on social media.  http://blog.hubspot.com/blog

I handle the social media on numerous client accounts routinely.  You can do this yourself, I promise!