Social Media can be an awesome thing and can be a great way for you to get your content out there.
However, it can also cause you to waste a whole lot of time.
There are so many distractions on Social Media that it can easily send you down a rabbit trail watching all kinds of silly videos or just doing a lot of browsing that will never grow your business.
How do we manage Facebook and Twitter efficiently without wasting a very precious asset (time)?
That’s what I’m exploring in today’s episode.
Listen to This Episode
Inside This Episode
One of the things I’ve struggled with is managing my Social Media presence. Quite frankly, it has been somewhat of a love-hate relationship.
I love what social media sites have to offer, and I also hate what they have to offer. I love that I’m able to connect with so many people all over the world, and I hate that I can easily WASTE hours on there doing nothing.
Since I see social media as an important part of what I do, I must use it in a way that makes sense to me, where I can provide value and connect with people, but not at the expense of being present with my family or doing the tasks that actually grow my business directly.
I wanted to share how I’m currently managing Facebook and Twitter for my blogs, what I’ve learnt and how I’m moving forward, with the hopes that some of the strategies and tools I use can help you.
So here goes . . .
Please note: Much of this content is taken from my Facebook Marketing Strategies course inside my Become A Blogger University and will serve as the foundation for my Social Media Management course in the future.
What are your goals?
When deciding on a social media strategy, you need to be very clear on what your goal is. Your goal should not be to build up a social media presence to have a social media presence. It should be to use it as a way to build your business.
Your business is NOT on Facebook or Twitter, so having a goal of funneling them back to your blog and more specifically to your email list should be your top goal.
How much time do you want to spend?
If you’re looking at marketing on Facebook and Twitter as a core part of your strategy, don’t just dive in whenever and however. Determine how much time you want to spend on those platforms and then spend that amount of time.
For me, I’ve decided to spend 1 hour/day marketing my blog on social media. However, I spend up to 2 hours on Sunday planning out the week.
Of that time, 30 minutes will be spent in the evening AFTER I’ve done all of my crucial business tasks for the day and 30 will be spent during the day at random times. I use RescueTime to track how well I’m doing with this.
What does your audience want to SHARE?
The key in being successful with social media is not really about how much you can share. It’s about how much of your stuff other people are sharing. By creating stuff that people love to share, you will increase your reach significantly.
What do people want to share? According to The Psychology of Sharing, a study done by the New York Times Customer Insights Group, we generally share for one of five reasons:
- To bring valuable and entertaining content to others
- To define ourselves to others
- To grow and nourish our relationships
- To give us a sense of self-fulfillment
- To get the word out there about causes or brands
Thinking about these elements beforehand and how your content can help them share for those reasons can really help you get your stuff out there.
The Tools I Use
As I’ve grown in my blogging, I’ve tried all kinds of tools out for different reasons. After a bunch of research I’ve settled on the following tools:
Buffer App (Desktop/Mobile) – I use this for scheduling my tweets. It’s the easiest program I’ve found for doing this. I’ve tried Hootsuite and dislike because it’s just not as simple as Buffer App.
Coschedule (Desktop only) – This is a relatively new one for me. It’s a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to schedule your social media updates for your blog posts in an interesting way. Once I’ve added a draft of a post to my blog, I can immediately schedule social media updates. The plugin does much more than that. It allows you to manage your team and editorial calendar. I’m currently exploring those features.
Feedly (Desktop/Mobile) – I use this to subscribe to blogs that I want to follow. Instead of going to each of those blogs, I have those blogs all come to me via my feedly account. I can then choose posts to add to Buffer App.
Pocket (Desktop/Mobile) – Whenever I find a random article or post that I want to share with my
audience, I save it to my pocket account. Then when I sit down to schedule my posts, I can browse through Pocket to see what I wanted to share.
Snip.ly (Desktop) – This is also one that I just started using but I love it. It allows me to share posts from anywhere on the web but insert a call to action for people to come back to my blog, or sign up for my list. It’s a great way to share other people’s stuff while still getting the benefit of growing your email list.
Facebook Scheduler
Facebook prefers for you to share stuff from directly on the platform. Fortunately, they also have a scheduler that you can use so that, when you go to post something to your Facebook page, you can either click on post or you can click on this little down arrow and when you click on that, you can schedule it for anytime in the future.
To find out HOW I use these tools to market my blog, go ahead and listen to this episode.
Your Turn
What tools do you use for managing Twitter, Facebook or any other Social Network you use in building your blog? Share them in the comments below.
Infographic
Resources Mentioned
- Rescue Time – A tool you can use to track the amount of time you spend on certain social media platforms.
- Buffer App – An app used to manage and schedule tweets.
- CoSchedule – A WordPress plugin that makes it easy to schedule your social media updates for your blogs in an interesting way.
- Feedly – Collates all blog feeds (to which you're subscribed to) in one Feedly account.
- Get Pocket – Allows you to save certain posts from the web that you want to share for a later time.
- Snip.ly – Allows content sharing from anywhere on the web and insert a call to action that leads people back to your blog or sign up for your list.
- Facebook Scheduler – A Facebook feature that allows you to manage scheduling of posts to your pages.
Transcript
Some people prefer to read along with the podcast episode. Others actually prefer to read than listen. If you are one of those people, not to worry. I've got a transcript right here for you 🙂
Click here to download transcript.
Announcements
- I’m at Social Media Marketing world in San Diego, California. If you’re here, tweet at me – @LeslieSamuel. Lets get together.
- I’m going to be one of the co-hosts for Geek Beat TV with Cali Lewis at the National Association of Broadcasters and New Media Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. The dates are April 13th through 16th. I’ll be there from the 12th through the 17th.
- If you plan to be at any of these, let me know. I’d love to meet you there. If you want to find out more about these events, click on the links above.