There’s a few little things you can do which will ensure your social media presence remains active and engaging. The following 7 tips will point you in the right direction:
1. Optimise your accounts
Ensure all your social media accounts are optimised with a professional, yet friendly photo, keyword rich bio and design work to reflect your branding e.g. Twitter background and a Facebook Page cover image. Complete all fields available to you and use these spaces to really sell yourself and your business.
2. Welcome new connections
Publicly welcome new Twitter followers and ask them a question to generate engagement. On LinkedIn offer a new connection a tip or ask a question in a private message. The same goes for Facebook. All this helps to break the ice – and trust me, this will make you memorable.
Refrain from spammy and salesy welcomes! And, do not add a new connection to a mailing list just because you have connected in these spaces!
3. Share relevant content
Social media marketing is more about sharing rather than promoting. This post Engaging vs Promoting tells you why. You will know who your target audience is and by retweeting, sharing others posts and good content curation will ensure quality content is shared on each of the platforms you choose to use. There are some great tools and apps about that can assist with content curation. e.g. Google alerts, Scoop.it, Paper.li and Flipboard just to name a few.
4. Use hashtags
Use relevant hashtags wherever possible. This will assist to have you found in searches by others. Hashtags are now relevant on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook. Just go easy with them on Facebook. I suggest no more than 2-3 within an update. Anything more looks desperate!
5. Be consistent
Whatever you do, be consistent with your social media activity. One tweet per day and one Facebook post a week just isn’t enough to make an impression through the noise. If you understand the value of social media but just can’t keep up – you need some support and that’s where we can help!
6. Create lists to be more strategic
Lists are great for both Facebook and Twitter and I wouldn’t be without these. The equivalent on Google+ are the circles. They allow you to be more strategic with your engagement which equates to efficiency in your time.
7. Gentle scheduling
I have no problem with businesses being smart with their time and using the tools available to do some gentle scheduling. What I mean by gentle scheduling is a few generic tweets/posts that remind your audience what you do. While you are active in these spaces you will always get new connections who don’t know what you have to offer. Continue to add to your bank of tweets/posts and the more this grows, the less often they are repeated. This blog post Have more time for your business offers more information about this process.
Want to take a little break? Go under the radar of having a dormant account with a few RSS feeds included. These can be set within Hootsuite and no doubt, other platforms would include the ability to set RSS feeds also.
So, if you have spent some time building a presence on Twitter in particular but need a break, you don’t want your account to be seen as stale. To assist you to go ‘under the radar’ from those who do their Twitter housekeeping, some of the tips above will keep your account active and will not show up as inactive within tools such as Manage Flitter.
There you go, you will now look like a social media Pro!
What tips can you add to ensure an active presence on social media?