Social media can help your business garner interest from new potential clients and customers. Posting on a regular basis can be difficult, and without a schedule your Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms might not get the attention they deserve. Here are some tips on how to organize a social media calendar that will increase the reach of your business across all platforms.
Posts as Marketing
Your social media posts are part of your marketing campaign. If you have future events scheduled for your business, you know how to plan. Carry those skills over to your social media platforms. Take a look at the new products you have in your shop, which new services you’re offering, or even seasonal deals and make note of these for the next couple months.
For instance, LifeLock, an identity theft prevention company, might single out spring and summer as high density travel months for customers. They then would schedule their social media around how to protect your identity while traveling. During Christmas they might have tips for shoppers, and warnings on known cons.
Think about your own business, what it specializes in from season to season, and write down a list of 10 to 12 things for each of the next three months.
Social Media Tools
You need tools in order to disperse your events over all social media platforms. Buffer, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social are social media management services that do similar things in slightly different ways. There are other social media management services out there, but it’s up to you to identify which one fits your needs best.
- Buffer is a simple management service with both free and premium options. Buffer provides you with a queue in which to schedule your tweets and messages over multiple platforms. Link your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to this site and post on all of them from one central hub. With easy to use buttons, you can prioritize which messages get sent to which platforms. Focus your messages to the different customer demographics that use the various social media outlets.
- Hootsuite is the most popular social media management service on the market. Unlike Buffer, Hootsuite doesn’t only provide you with a timed queue, it also lets you track multiple Twitter and hashtag feeds. While Buffer is one sided, Hootsuite lets you monitor Twitter as well. Compatible with Google+ as well as Facebook, this service can help you schedule your social media campaign each day so you don’t end up spending hours checking Twitter.
- Sprout Social is a more specialized social media service that relies heavily on statistics and data accumulation. Like Hootsuite and Buffer, Sprout Social lets you schedule posts to a variety of social media platforms. An analytics tool lets you view which of your tweets and social media posts are getting the most attention in terms of likes and reposts, and it lets you watch your competition or partner businesses in order to learn about what is and isn’t working for them. This can increase your productivity and reach when it comes to social media.
Engaging with a wider community via social media should be fun and helpful for you, your company, and customers. Don’t let your social media interactions become one sided. Always take comments and customer interaction into account in order to better cater to their needs.
