The following tips are based on what I’ve learned over the last few years from various social media experts. These tips will help you utilize it the best you can.
Tip #1: Have a strategy. I’ve been taught that posting 2-3 times is a reasonable and effective amount. Set aside about 5 minutes each time. I find it helpful to actually include social media tasks in my monthly schedule. I plan to post early morning, late morning and late afternoon every day. Of course you need to be flexible with what else you may have each week.
Tip #2: Shake-up your content. The idea of social networking is to build the know, like and trust factor with your “friends”. Therefore a combination of business, helpful content and personal informational is a great mix. Updates pertaining to business would be promoting your business and anything going on with your business. Helpful content relates to you sharing your expertise with your audience. For example, if you’re a real estate agent you might share a tip about how to get your house ready to sell, etc. Personal information is really anything about just you that isn’t related dot you business. It can range from something about your kids to what you ate for dinner! You’re probably wondering why you would share this information. By sharing personal information you relate with your audience, they see you’re an actual person and they bond with you over like things. However, do keep in mind everyone your friends with, including their friends depending on your settings, will see what you post.
Tip #3: People only see what is flowing through their news feed when they are actually looking at it. It’s even harder for people to see your posts if they have lots of friends because it means there are more people in the rotation flowing through their news feed. If people click “like” to your post it increases the chance of it flowing through the news feed more often. Your chances are also increased when you attach a picture or video with your post.
Tip #4: Interact with other people. Part of your five minutes should be looking at your news feed and commenting & clicking “like” on other people’s status posts. Make sure you’re being sincere and only commenting/clicking on posts that are actually of interest. You will start to build relationships with like-minded people. Another tip is to pay it forward if someone clicks like/comments on one of your posts, o to their page and respond back to something you’re interested in. This again is about relationship building.
Tip #5: Don’t replace social media with traditional networking. As tempting as it is to hide behind your computer, make sure you’re still getting out there! Nothing replaces face-to-face contact and relationship building. Social media should be a secondary form only.
If we’re not already connected on Facebook I would love to! Look for me at http://facebook.com/chrissy.atley