Social Media Management Guide for Beginners- Part 1

There is a lot of published material about social media management that proposes all it takes is 15 minutes a day and you too can have a presence on social media networks. Just google social media 15 minutes a day and pages of books and blog links will come up with good social media tactical advice. Key words here are “monitor” and “presence”.

We argue that yes, in 10 - 15 minutes a day you can monitor your business presence on social media, but if you want to truly engage and achieve a specific marketing goal using social media as the vehicle, it’s going to take more time. We recommend a minimum of 15 minutes per day, per social media network.

“Social Media Isn’t Free”, our introductory course, we cover how to get started participating in the three main social media networks. We recommend starting with one network based on your business model and marketing goals.

 

Here is is a short list of marketing goals which an inbound marketing plan, including a social media program, can help your company achieve.

All successful marketing programs start with establishing a goal and social media programs also follow this marketing best practice. If often takes 3 to 6 months before your business will start to see the results of a social media program, so it’s important to set measurable goals and monitor the results weekly.

Also before diving into action, identify your content strategy and resources. Develop a content calendar, similar to an editorial calendar, to set a publishing schedule. We also recommend implementing a social media publishing tool such as Hootsuite. This will allow you to schedule content across networks and simplifies the process with an easy to use dashboard. Monitoring content about your industry before engaging in the conversation is also a great way to get started.

Stay tuned to the blog and we will share a daily management guide for each of the three main networks. Part 2 Twitter Daily Management will  publish soon. Also, please refer back to the Social Media Isn’t Free presentation for more social media tips for small businesses and local Central Texas case studies. Got a business social profile you would like to share with us? We love to see how businesses are using social media to communicate with customers.