I can’t lie, social media used to be a lot easier and a lot more fun, back in the early days. Now, it’s very crowded, hard to cut through and geared to more of a user-pays system (if you want to be seen). Dang.
Really though, we can’t begrudge the social giants this. I mean, why should they be forking out all their time and effort to help us do well? Altruism only goes so far, right?! It doesn’t pay the developers!
Of course it was inevitable that they’d make us pay to be seen, in the end. This does tend to make it harder for the little guys (like us) who have a small budget or no budget to commit to social media marketing. Luckily there are other ways to make your social sing. It just requires a bit of innovation which is the heartland of the little guy success, right?
The landscape is always shifting when it comes to social media. Just when you think you’ve got it sorted out – an algorithm changes or a new platform pops up and you’re back where you started from. You can keep up to date with these shifts and plan for them by following dedicated social media blogs like : Social Media Examiner and Social Media Today. These sites not only outline changes in Facebook algorithms and the like, they share strategies for getting the best out of each platform.
While subscribing to them can be a little bit soul-destroying in terms of the volume of tech-y/strategic info you’re going to bombarded with – checking in on these kinds of sites on a regular basis will pay dividends in your own social media success story.
As the social landscape shifts, there are opportunities to do well and be seen and heard if you come at things from a fresh angle. While steadily updating your Twitter/FB/Instagram are definitely important – it’s innovation and fun ideas that are going to really cut through.
Have a think about your blog or website’s online presences. Are there opportunities to create a more intimate Facebook group for your blog/site? Perhaps you could host a Twitter Party? Maybe you could create a little hashtag movement that profiles the work of others? Think about the clever things you could do – things that have a trickle-down affect and promote or assist others – and do those things.
While the marketing and business world are a bit obsessed with scaling ideas – creating something that is clever and engaging and attracting the masses – it’s actually much more impactful to create clever content for social media that attracts your favourite kind of reader. If you are providing delightful or interesting content for your favourite people- those people will not only thank you for it, they will probably share it too.
These more intimate exchanges offer a lot more opportunity to actually create relationships with the people on the other side of the computer (or mobile) screen. Not only that, this starting small idea (which we talked about earlier in the course) also means you can measure and respond to your readers’ experience in a more intuitive way.
Trying to make for the masses is not only a tricky task – it’s really hard to monitor and implement. Making great social content for your chosen few is a much more refined task. You know your readers, you know the things that they respond to and you can tailor your own social media content and tone to match their interests (whilst still keeping your own goals/mission in mind).
Remember we talked about creating images JUST for social media in this lesson? So you can think about doing that.
Look at the Twitter stream on your Twitter account (if you have one). What are you seeing? What stands out? What doesn’t? What could you bring to the table that would improve, surprise, inform, excite? Make some notes on that and add this task to your editorial work-flow.
Now head to Facebook. Which posts are doing well on your Facebook page/profile? And which are duds? Check other pages too – what’s coming up roses? What’s not working? Start to build a picture of what’s working and what isn’t. If you have a Facebook page you can get a ton of info on this from Facebook Insights.
Next tackle Instagram. Do the same thing. Check out what’s being recommended to you on Instagram. What’s doing well for your Insta profile. What other people are doing. Make notes on Instagram success and start thinking about the hints this gives you on what might work for you.
So let’s go through this step by step….
Sign up for:
1. CoSchedule (if you can’t use CoSchedule, that’s okay. Buffer will do the same work for you – just not from inside your blog’s dashboard, which is not such a big deal right?!)
2. Feedly – an RSS blog reader with super powers
3. Buffer – a super awesome social media scheduler
These three can help you to create a MUCH simpler social media management strategy. I promise! Do yourself a favour!
Remember how we talked about scooping up your blog’s social media promotion into your editorial work flow? CoSchedule can help you do that. If you aren’t able to use CoSchedule – add this to your regular editorial calendar (manual or online calendars are both good) and schedule your tweets/Facebook mentions via Buffer).
If you’re not using Co-Schedule – that’s okay. You can put all your social media mentions into Buffer instead.
So – every single time you write a blog post – also schedule the social mentions for that post. At the same time. Do it then. Not later. Okay. Good.
Using Feedly/Buffer. No matter what kind of blog you have, you should sign up for Buffer. It’s just the BEST and most flexible way to share stuff on social media. You can connect Facebook and Twitter to Buffer and set up an auto-schedule timetable in the Buffer dashboard.
Perhaps you want Buffer to tweet content you’ve loaded/curated at 7am, 8am, 8.30am, 12.05pm, 12.30pm, 5.05pm, 5.20pm, 8pm, 9pm – for instance. You can lock all of that into Buffer as your auto-schedule framework and Buffer will post the posts/articles that you’ve queued up at those times.
Feedly is a best friend to Buffer. Sign up for Feedly – add all your favourite blogs to your Feedly stream – connect Buffer to Feedly. Then every time you read something great in Feedly you can click the Buffer icon at the bottom of the post and send that post to your Buffer scheduler. This is such an easy way to curate things you want to share.
If you’ve set up your auto-schedule on Buffer – those posts will be fed out at the intervals you’ve chosen.
And while scheduling is a great time-saver – it’s important to also monitor your stream and react, reply or respond. I use Tweetdeck, but Hootsuite is also good.
Schedule 5 minutes a day to look at your Twitter account and retweet, reply, favourite or block. If you have TEN minutes – Tweet something chatty straight up, so that you can (perhaps) chat live as you do this monitoring work. Do the same for Facebook. Allocate 5 minutes a day to checking in, replying to comments and comment on other pages.
Note that if you are posting possibly controversial content on social media – you really need to monitor that more than once a day. According to Australian media laws, you’re responsible for public comments left on your Facebook page – so if you’re sparking tricky discussions you need to monitor those discussions vigilantly. Five minutes a day will not work for that kind of content!
Phew. That’s a bit to go on with. Let me know how you go with my recommended 3 prong approach to managing this stuff. If you use Feedly and Buffer (and/or coSchedule) as discussed, I think it can completely revolutionise you social media workflow.