I’ll admit, there are a lot of these tips out there but they all say the same thing. I’m going to talk about some tips that I’ve not seen mentioned that much before.
Planning is key!
Before you even begin you need to know a few things:
- How much time can you set aside each day?
- Who is responsible for the content and who can take over for holidays etc?
- Who will be the person to quickly react to questions and comments?
- What do you hope to achieve from it?
- Do you have all the logos etc for continuity across the platforms
These are key questions to answer which platforms you can realistically target with the time you have set aside each day.
So let’s begin with the unusual tips:
#1 Targeting Social Media Platforms
A lot of these type of tips will tell you to target where your audience is. This is sound advice but it isn’t always the correct advice. I would change it to:
Target the platforms that you know you can keep quickly posting great content on, with the matching platforms that have the biggest audiences.
As an example, someone who rarely takes photos would struggle to create content on platforms where photos are what the user likes, shares and engages with. Keeping this updated would become a daily headache, rather that an easy task.
If you find out that most of your audience is on a photo-sharing platform but you don’t take photos, you need to think hard about whether you have the time. Would it be better to target the next two most popular platforms if they are the ones you can easily keep constantly updated with great content?
If it takes you weeks or months to create a single piece of content for the most popular platform, but you can quickly find your rhythm on other platforms, you should find that those smaller platforms will perform better than the big platform.
#2 Notifications
I never see this mentioned but if the platforms you choose have a way for customers to communicate with you then you MUST have notifications set-up so you can interact with them quickly. Unless you have the tools in front of you on the screen, you need to be able to quickly engage with the user.
I use Twitter chats a lot and in #TorbayHour last week a company posted a tweet about flying a 737 airliner in a pilot training flight simulator. At that moment the geek in me thought “I’d love to do that!”. I instantly replied with a question… they never replied. They weren’t even in the chat, it was just a boring, scheduled tweet. That put me off ever using them. Why should they get business from me if they don’t even answer questions about their own tweet?
People impulse buy but if the engagement isn’t there the impulse quickly fades!
#3 Use Twitter Chats
These are incredibly useful ways to create brand awareness and sales, locally and further afield. They can create lots of new followers, lots of interactions and can be great fun! See my blog post: The power and fun of Twitter chats and how you find them.
#4 Twitter Lists are very useful
Twitter lists are often ignored but they are a great way to organise who, what, were and when to engage with other users. Inspiring Joe did a nice article on “what are twitter lists and how to organise them“.
#5 Budget for freebies
I’ve watched two companies on Facebook go from a couple of hundred following to over ten thousand following in just a few weeks. Both these companies did the same thing… freebies! Every week they would give away something. Sometimes it was worth £50 or so, sometimes it was just a few stickers and a cap. Both asked people to Like, share, invite a friend and comment on their page. People did this in droves because people like free stuff!
You don’t have to go mad, you don’t have to give away hugely expensive items. It will get you noticed very quickly for little effort and it can cost a lot less than promoting your page in the advertising system the platform uses.
#6 Let people know when you’re not there to engage with them
Social Media is global. I get interactions all through the night from all over the World when I’m asleep. If my last post before they contacted me was saying good night, they are less likely to be annoyed that I haven’t answered them straight away.
I also have my location in my profile so if I don’t say good morning or good night they might still see what Country I’m in and be aware that at 4am UK time, it’s unlikely I’ll be answering them until I’m awake.
#7 USE THE PLATFORM!
I did some market research for a client who has a hotel. I wanted to see what other hotels in the area were tweeting about and which tweets were successful. Incredibly over 80% of them hadn’t posted an update in months… a few of them hadn’t posted anything in YEARS!
They jumped on the bandwagon and then did nothing with them. I posted a moan about this a while ago: Social Media – use it or don’t advertise it! It is worth reading. Don’t jump on everything. Find out which of the platforms are good for YOU and USE THEM!
#8 Having lots of followers doesn’t matter
I only have a bit over 5,000 followers on Twitter. That isn’t a lot but even if I only had 1 follower it is still easy to reach out to a large audience if you remember the ‘social’ part of social media. An enjoyable hour on a Twitter chat last week earned me this lovely accolade…
#9 Don’t schedule everything
Yes there are lot of tools out there to make posting your content quicker and easier but honestly, I have more engagement when I’m physically in front of the screen and interacting than I do when I schedule posts.
If you find you have some spare time join in a Twitter chat, or quote some tweets. Comment and share on interesting posts on Facebook, find something funny and post it. Comment on a current news event. Show that your account isn’t just a scheduled auto-bot, show that yes, you are on there engaging as well as scheduling. you will get more from it!
#10 Know when to drop a platform
So you’ve done all the above. You spend equal time on various platforms but some constantly perform worse than others. There needs to come a point where time vs reward is taken into account. Before you reach that stage make 100% sure that you’ve done everything you can.
Personally I’ve dropped… my Facebook page. Yes, the one that everyone says you need to be on. I have tried to make it work, I have other successful FaceBook pages that are working really well. I just don’t have the time to create the content FaceBook users want for that specific page.
When I look at my stats for the two the decision is easy:
Twitter drives almost 95% of Social Media visitors to my site. I know precisely what my followers want on Twitter, I know how to provide that content quickly and easily. I have tweaked and tweaked what I do over the years and it’s working.
I know what I need to do for the Facebook page but it is a time-commitment too much. I want to keep my focus on the most successful platform for me. I am using the time to surge Twitter forward. I still have the Facebook page, I just no longer advertise it on my website (as mentioned in #7 above).
