Sorry sweetheart, your personal Facebook page isn’t social media experience

Courtesy ChadKaser.wordpress.com

This seems pretty obvious but I’m willing to bet that there are some knuckleheads who get into this because they are prolific personal social media posters. They think, “How hard can social media for a brand be? You just post stuff and get likes. I’ve got 862 friends on FB and 1637 followers on TW, I’m a freaking natural.”

So what’s the difference?

• You need a Strategy to reach communication goals. You don’t post just because the urge strikes. You don’t post just because you see something funny you want to share.
• You’ve got to Research your audience. What do they want to hear? When do they want to hear it? How do they like to hear it?
• You should be Crafting a message based on your strategy and research. Just throwing out slop loses the respect of your intended audience. When you lose the respect of your audience you lose their attention. When you lose their attention often enough, you lose your job.
• Posting comes back to strategy. Don’t post when your target won’t hear it. Don’t post where your audience won’t see it. Don’t post what will lose/alienate your audience.
• You’ve got to be Listening to your audience. It’s not just what they say, it’s what they do. Look at your metrics. What do people respond to the most? When are they responding and where?
• If you’ve been listening, you will certainly need to make Tactical Adjustments. That’s your life now: making adjustments – All.The.Time. Social & digital media move so fast that everything you do will be about adjusting to changing responses from your audience, changing conditions on the Interwebs, and changing technology.
• Revisit Strategy.
• Continually Research.
• Always Be Crafting new messages.
• Ad infinitum into this ouroboros thing where the head swallows the tail – no beginning or end. (look it up)

When was the last time you did research on your personal followers before you posted that picture of the ultimate ice cream sundae on Instagram? Do you know your strategy for your tweets about your displeasure at a college football game? What message are you consciously crafting for Pinterest?

See the difference?

Have I left out any considerations or steps in this social media cycle? Which step do you like best? In which step are you weakest?

I’d love to hear from you.

-Tina

Social Media is a 24-Hour Gig. Can you hack it?

Courtesy under30CEO.com

You’ve gotta sleep sometime!

I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t be on 24/7. Since I can’t be the 24-hour-a-day Social Media Mama I’d like to be, I’ve found a couple of easy hacks to help me get the message out and stay engaged around the clock.

I’ve taken a tip from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It’s the idea of putting all your big rocks (in this case, your message) into your glass (your schedule) before it gets filled with other stuff. Trust me, it will get filled with other stuff if you don’t take control of your schedule and get the important things scheduled first.

Since you have a finite amount of time, attention, and space to communicate in, make sure you have the important messages out there first. I do this by scheduling my posts at least a week into the future.

I figure out what is the most important message/s to get out this week and schedule those posts first, typically one post a day at different times. Those are my big rocks. No matter what goes on in the world, this is what must be communicated.

Then I have space in between those rocks. I can play in this space. This is where I bring in breaking news, polls, funny videos. I can engage fully and respond quickly when I’m not worrying if I’ve fully communicated my message/s. I can focus.

Zack Levine via HudsonHorizons.com

To schedule posts, I prefer HootSuite to any other scheduling options out there. It’s fairly comprehensive; you can schedule & monitor Twitter, FB, Google+, LinkedIn, WordPress and others. It’s also easy to manage many accounts in one place. There is a free version for up to five networks. I highly recommend tinkering with it if you aren’t already in HootSuite. Of course, they do have an app for smartphones and tablets too.

I also use the smartphone and tablet apps for the various networks I’m on. So far, I’ve set my notifications only for retweets, shares, comments, new followers. This makes it manageable for me to respond and engage immediately without much negative feedback from friends and loved ones. (Stay tuned for my blog about monitoring digital media 24/7 while having analog relationships.)

What do you use to hack your social media posting schedule? Are you managing it all or crumbling under the pressure?

Speaking of being under pressure, enjoy this sweet video from the incomparable band Queen. Do you ever feel like this?

I’d love to hear from you.

-Tina