Building and managing a positive and effective presence on social media for business is an immense undertaking.
There is a lot that needs to be done, and it can be difficult to keep all aspects of social media marketing working well.
One of the most valuable tips for social media marketing we can offer is to make a checklist to follow, and this can help you immeasurably.
Using a checklist can help you keep on top of the entire list of daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks required for a successful social media marketing strategy.
Here we present an example checklist of tasks you need to pay attention to; this will obviously need some tweaking for your individual business model and how you choose to use social media.
7 x daily tasks
- Respond to inbound messages – both private and direct messages, as well as queries sent in comment form. These require prompt attention so should be a priority. You need to show an active presence and for many social media users, social platforms are a first port of call for customer service. Consumers expect you to respond quickly.
- Respond to brand mentions. You should monitor these daily and show an active presence by responding to these, even if the person who has mentioned you is not expecting you to even see their comment. This can make the difference between winning and losing with social media for business.
- Well-timed posts build your follower base, encourage engagement and interaction with your profile, and ideally drive traffic to your business website. You should aim to be posting:
- To Facebook at least once or twice per week
- To Twitter between five and ten times per week
- To LinkedIn once per week
- To Google+ once or twice per week
- To Instagram up to three times per week
Ensure all posts are of high quality content and limit self promotion to no more than 20-30% of posts.
Note that some posts can be pre-scheduled and automated (see monthly tasks).
- Find potential customers and engage with them. Look at who is interacting with or mentioning your competitors – and use the opportunity to introduce yourself and show what you have to offer.
- Create content for future sharing … unique images, memes, and work on articles for blog posting. Your content should inform, inspire, and motivate your audience. Offer an array of types of content including polls, quizzes, how-to guides, and links to blog posts.
- Do your research. This is an ongoing task that will help drive your success, as social media is such a dynamic entity. Constantly be on the lookout for ways to improve your social media offerings, as well as monitoring your competitors. What are they doing that works? How can you be inspired by their social media? What new tools are available? What are considered to be best practices on social media? You need to remain abreast of all of these.
- Converse with your brand advocates. Brand advocates are those social media users who love your brand and recommend it to their community on social media. They share your posts and act as lead generators for your business. Create and maintain a relationship with these very valuable social media users – they can help your business thrive in the long term. Remember to also express gratitude to them for doing so!
3 x weekly tasks
- Engage with your marketing partners, community managers, and thought leaders. Build strong relationships without being pushy. Thank others where it is appropriate to do so and take nothing for granted.
- Brainstorm and explore ideas for social media tactics with your team. Consider your brand, your products, and your target audience. Look at industry trends and new strategies.
Are your social media offerings and messages reflecting your brand identity? How can you make your social posts more powerful and captivating for your audience?
- Update any events you are running or attending on your social calendar. Showcase these events on social media as yet another way to add interest to your posts.
4 x monthly tasks
- Audit your social media – what’s working? What’s not working? How can you change your approach for the better?
- Consider hosting an event – and live stream from it or blog about it.
- Collaborate with all members of your team. Valuable ideas can come from many different directions and those who know your brand and business are best poised to offer useful input.
- Give yourself a break … Not a holiday, just from from social media by automating some of your posts (but not all of them). Plan your posts ahead and pre-schedule them to publish at a given time. This is a great way to keep to a posting schedule that is well organised yet allows you to step away from social media commitments and put your focus elsewhere.
5 x quarterly tasks
- Monitor and evaluate your social analytics. Which social networks are delivering your best return on investment? What sort of post content works best for your brand?
Are your follower numbers growing? Are you losing a lot of followers? Are you doing anything that may be annoying to your followers? Do your follower numbers and your page likes numbers comply with each other?
If you have many more page likes than active followers, ask yourself why. Those who actually wish to see your content in their news feeds will choose to follow your posts.
- Reassess your approach to social media. What are best practices for you? Are you following these? Ask for feedback from your partners, your employees, family and friends, as well as your social audience. What do you do that they love? What could you do better? What do they want more of?
- Make it simple to share. It’s important for your content to be share worthy so your employees can share your brand content across their own social networks. Encourage them to do so without being pushy.
- Read blogs and other material online that relates to using social media for business. There is a wealth of information out there and there are many, many experts in the field who are more than willing to share their knowledge. Using these tactics and tips for social media marketing can transform your approach.
- Assess your key performance indicators and adjust your goals if necessary. Change your strategy to comply with the latest trends. If you do move the goal posts, note that your key performance indicators may change as well. As you reach or surpass your goal, set a new goal – there is no “end point”.
As you can see, managing social media for business is no small task.
You need a measured and well considered approach. Be very wary of social media burnout – you need to find ways to have an active presence but still make time to give yourself a break.
Delve into the tools available for data analysis, automation, and carefully select just one to three suitable networks to use – choose these based on your business, brand, and target audience.
Let’s talk about LinkedIn!
While we are talking social media for business here are some of best blogs on our favourite platform, LinkedIn!
Have you ever considered growing your career or your business with LinkedIn?
There are numerous ways to create a LinkedIn marketing strategy, and in this article we’ll look at some simple tips and explain how to use LinkedIn for business and create a marketing plan for measureable results.
2. Latest LinkedIn changes – what you need to know
LinkedIn has introduced some pretty significant changes in the last few months. These LinkedIn changes include a new look and feel to user homepages, profile pages and also changes to the LinkedIn pricing structure, so that more users will pay to use the platform (or pay more than they already were).
3. Why you should blog – and share it on social media (including LinkedIn)
One of the more important things that should be shared on your social media business page is your blog. Don’t have a blog? You should!
Social media sharing includes news flashes, inspirational or funny memes, product showcases, images, and much more.
Have you done our free LinkedIn eCourse?
4 Week LinkedIn Optimisation Course: Not only do we share a bunch of valuable, relative and useful info on our blogs, but we’ve got a free LinkedIn eCourse to help you get the most out of this platform especially for B2B enterprises.
If LinkedIn is your preferred social media channel, take a look at this course to raise your profile, generate leads and boost your business – so LinkedIn can start working for you.