If you’re a business and a small business like me, social media is a precious resource. But you end up putting a lot of time in and getting very little out. If you’re trying to keep up with it all at once trawling through timelines can eat up days and days. So I have two words for you:
Scheduling and keywords
It’s taken a while but I’ve finally realised that sites like Hootsuite are my friend.
I realised very quickly that I had almost stopped logging into my Twitter and Instagram accounts. This was especially important in the evening when I wanted to switch off from work, but I knew it was also a key time for my customer base and collaborators who hold down other jobs so I finding it hard to put down my tablet.
By using keyword search facilities to pick up on anything that might be relevant to me re industry news and finding new customers, I was already whittling down dozens of tweets to almost nothing. I could check in, and at a quick glance know if there was anything I needed to respond to. But it takes time to get the keywords right. So be prepared to do your research and trial and error searches in multiple streams.
On the dashboard you can also add mentions and messages so you won’t miss out on this key content either. I am now picking up on updates I would never have found otherwise thanks to the search words I can add.
Scheduling is something you can do across multiple sites. I use it on Hootsuite for Twitter which doesn’t have its own and I schedule my own key times as well as using the Automated system. Be warned however that even if you schedule posts to go to Instagram it will not publish them due to access rights. It does means however, that I can post key updates at times I might not want to be logging in, know I won’t be around or I’m not sure when the optimum time is to get things seen.
WordPress has an invaluable scheduling system for posting blog updates. It means I can bank up loads of ready to go pieces, schedule them and know when I’m starting to run out. Generally I try to have at least 6 posts queued. I post twice a week which means I am always three weeks ahead of myself. And by using their statistics I can work out when are the best times for people logging into my page to pick up new content.
The thing is, now I have all this spare time in the evenings, I don’t know what to do with myself!
For all things Falcieri Designs check out my website at www.falcieridesigns.co.uk
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