I wanted to devote today’s post to a topic that continually crops up when I speak with small business owners: social media. While everyone understands that it’s here to stay and that they should be taking advantage of it because it’s a free way to market their businesses, there remains a “deer in the headlights” look on many of their faces when this comes up.
First, a disclaimer: I don’t consider myself a social media “strategist,” which I’m quick to point out whenever I talk about social media. However, I do handle social media for some of my clients and for myself, so I share this knowledge based on my experience. (Hire with care when it comes to those who do claim to be social media “experts.”)
So, for those of you who may be experiencing social media “paralysis” (!), here are a few tips to get you moving:
1) The first tip I want to share is to decide which social media platforms you want to focus on. For B2B types, I suggest LinkedIn and maybe Twitter or Google+. For B2C, it’s probably Facebook and one of the others. Obviously, Pinterest is huge for some B2C companies. Why only two to three, you may be thinking. The answer is if you focus on ALL of them out of the gate, most likely, you’ll want to quit before you even get started. I’ve seen this happen, too. Small business owners get on a kick to hit social media hard and decide to go after all the major platforms at once. Then, they quickly see they can’t keep up, so they stop. Entirely. So, my advice choose two and master those before adding others to your repertoire.
We could discuss why I suggest these particular outlets, especially Google+–not everyone “gets” that one. I never did either until a colleague explained that whatever you post there contributes to your SEO (search engine optimization) results. It’s true. Try it. I’ve posted about clients on Google+, then when I’ve Googled them, my post comes up on the first page of results.
2) Which brings up another important point: don’t be afraid to experiment. Even if you use the wrong hashtag or forget to include a link the first time or two, it won’t hurt anything. You can learn as you go. We’re all learning as we go with social media. Look at what others are posting to get ideas. If you feel it’s truly that poor a post, you can always edit it–or worst-case scenario–delete it.
3) And let’s talk for a minute about how much time you should spend. To start, it may take a little longer. Spend 30 minutes three days/week to see how much you can get done. Once you get the hang of it, it shouldn’t take a lot of time. There are, of course, ways to set up automated posts via Hootsuite and other solutions. You can investigate those, as well, if you feel so inclined.
A word of caution: It’s good to post on a regular basis once you start. I often see folks on Twitter who look like they got started, but then haven’t posted for six months. That’s a no-no. There may be weeks when you can’t post as often, but try to commit to making sure you post at least a few times a week to show that you’re serious about it.
4) This would be a good time to mention, too, that the frequency of posting varies from one platform to another. For example, I tweet more often than I post on Facebook. I post on Google+ more often than I post on LinkedIn. The school of thought on this varies, but because the life of a tweet is so brief (I think I just read 20 minutes), I post there most often, sometimes five times/day. There’s a lot of research on what times of day to post, as well, which you can Google and read if you’re interested. On Twitter, at a minimum, I try to be sure to post first thing in the morning, again around lunchtime and maybe again later in the afternoon. I don’t always post on weekends.
I see this is getting lengthy, so I’ll talk more next time about what to post. Hint: It doesn’t all have to be original content.
