How To Be More Productive On Social Media

We all know one or two things about social media ,its an important part of doing business today. It’s a smart choice that businesses  use social media productively to build up their audience  rather than simply chat and interact.

According to Experian Marketing Services, Americans spend 16 minutes of every hour on social media sites, and much of that social media use is for personal, not business purposes.  These are a few tips that can help business owners maintain their focus on business and make social media use as productive as possible.

 The Content

 As with any artistic medium, social media success begins with good-quality content. Make your social media pages a reliable place to find engaging content and your audience will build by itself.

Unlike with other mediums, content isn’t just about what’s new. The internet is more like a connection of different strings jumbled up together than any person can untangle on their own, and so online curation has become an art form in itself. Most social media use is casual – and a growing amount is done in short spurts via mobile devices .

Analysis

The term ‘analysis’ is used to refer to measuring things about your social media content that effect its reach and audience – an excellent example would be analyzing how many people see your content when it’s shared at different times of day, or where people tend to see your content (do they search for the subject matter you cover, or are they seeing it shared by friends?)

Analyzing your social media can seem daunting, but this is an area where technology can do most of the work. I’ll talk a little later on about the types of service that can analyze multiple types of data, and even suggest what you can do to increase your audience, but analysis is actually pretty simple:

The goal is to learn incrementally, until you know exactly what, when and where to share in order to get the best reaction. Remember, though, that your audience is always growing, and that means they’re also changing. The ideal time to post might shift, and regular analysis will help you shift with it.

Knowing the Right channel

Although it’s great to maintain a presence on all the major networks, they may not all be the perfect fit for your business. After all, you want to be reaching your target audience. Try putting a little content on each network and see what engagement you get. Don’t forget newer networks like Pinterest and Instagram, especially if you have a very visual business.

Create a Social Media Personality

 Your “brand” is a very important part of your business it is what sets you apart from others on these sites, creating a unique voice that makes you instantly recognizable. That voice should match your business’s overall theme. This personality should appear not only in your posts, but your interaction with other users on social media sites, as well. If you have fun with it, others will have fun with it, as well.

 Manage distractions

You may not have heard this before but it's worth mentioning: turn off your social notifications. Your social media engagement is important, but you are a busy person, and that tweet may not need to be dealt with while you are trying to write your monthly newsletter, or while you’re speaking to a customer. Budget your time and allocate blocks in your day to address your social media. You will be able to deliver more thoughtful responses and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Involve Your Team 

Instead of frowning upon social media use in the workplace, encourage your staff to spend time Tweeting and Instagramming on behalf of your company. In fact, provide rewards and incentives for those who are successful in winning business using social media posts. You’ll earn new business while making your employees feel as though they’re an important part of the team.

Use The Right "sphere"

The social sphere is noisy, so you need to organize yourself, prioritize and ultimately engage with in the most targeted of conversations.By time blocking to only focus on social conversations and having the right dashboard to serve up the important stuff, you can easily do social media in less than 25 minutes a day.

Leverage the “share”

Content is often hard to find, but one of the great things about social is that people are sharing things all around you, and it’s very easy to grab content, and make a friend at the same time.  Think about it, you’d be pretty psyched if you saw that someone was sharing your posts or retweeting a tweet, so don’t ever be afraid to use someone’s content to share with your own audience. 

Know when to move it off social

There are some things that require going “offline” or moving to email. Social is a fantastic place to find these opportunities and start communication, but knowing when to give someone your phone number or direct email is very important. In fact, grabbing an email address is great when you can, so you can include the person in your newsletters and other less ‘social’ forms of communication.

Use the power of many

Encouraging your employees and team members to post on social helps make your job easier and establishes a much richer social media presence.  Behind the scenes pictures of people at the office are great for Instagram and Twitter, and are a fun way to get your audience to engage with your company on a more personal level. Be sure to be consistent if you use hashtags so people can start associating it with you and your company.