How do small businesses manage their social media postings daily? How can they ensure they’re part of the online conversation? How do small businesses find the time to post daily? Well, many just don’t. It can be overwhelming just reading about what your business should be doing to maintaining social media accounts, never mind actually doing it! We’d like to show you it’s possible to maintain your company’s social media presence without losing sleep. Here are our insights and tips for operating your social media accounts on your own.

Step 1: Human Contact

You’ve got to take the plunge and get on social media. Do a Social Media Audit before you begin so you don’t wear yourself out and waste time on platforms that don’t apply to you. Begin engaging with your audience and take the time to find out what’s going on in your local area and your industry. With some discipline, this can be effectively done in one hour or less on a weekly basis. Follow these easy steps during the time you set aside each week:

  1. Open social media accounts and find out who followed you, mentioned you, liked you, or tagged you in any posts online and thank those people or businesses. This is the first step to building human contact. When you thank a business, it might be relevant to also include a link to your company’s website, blog or weekly special.
  2. Browse through your feeds and share things pertaining to you or your industry. Social Media Marketing isn’t all about you – share and like, RT and +1 your way to good online relationships.
  3. Find articles you want to share yourself – news, blogs, website features etc. Keep these for posting in the next step by copying and pasting them into a word processor for future use.
  4. Close your accounts! To save time and stop the black hole social media can become, log out and proceed to step 2.

Step 2: Automation

You have many other responsibilities, so automation can become your friend. We’ve found some inexpensive options for your here. You still need to maintain Step 1 or you will miss out on most of the important connections and opportunities but the next half of your time can be spent scheduling your posts for the week ahead. Get to know how Social Media Platforms work and then proceed with these steps:

  1. Schedule the related articles you found while browsing your online feeds. Be sure to mention where the article came from and tag the author or news centre. Do some research online about peak posting times and use your Google analytics to find out when your audience is around, what links they have previously clicked and when. News and articles can be used 3-5 times per week on your platforms.
  2. Post any company related news pertaining to the week. If you have a special running, your hours have changed or you have new staff starting, schedule those posts. Remember, use your company posts like salt – a little goes a long way in helping to promote your company. Too much salt and you will leave a bad taste in the user’s mouth.
  3. Promote local industry, city events or charities. When you see a local company or charity promoting something, share it and schedule it. If your city has a great event happening – share and promote it! Local business is just that – LOCAL! Support local events, business and organizations. If your company is personally involved with events or charities, schedule those postings here too.

Once you’ve taken the time to schedule your weekly postings, log out and move on. It will probably take longer the first month or two to get organized and learn how to do each of these steps. Once you get more comfortable and familiar with it all, an hour a week should be all you need to maintain and build your online presence.

SMM Services Edmonton

When to Consider Hiring an Online Marketing Manger

  • The ‘hour a week’ takes you three hours – No matter how hard you try, online marketing is not your specialty. Posting, tagging and scheduling makes your head spin.
  • Seasonal work effectively brings your social media marketing to a stop – During your busy season, you can’t even spare an hour and all your off-season efforts suffer.
  • Your admin person doesn’t manage it well – Social media is taking your administration away from other work needing to be done, or they get distracted and spend way more time than necessary on online marketing tasks

We hope the above steps will help you join the online fun! If you’re battling to succeed or need some further help or training, we’re here! We can train you or someone in your company to maintain your accounts or we offer full service packages to plan and manage your marketing for you. We’re happy to chat with you and give you a free quote for whatever you’d like help with! Get in touch with us. Visit our contact page for more questions and concerns!