Taming the Social Media Management Monster
When it comes to taming the social media management monster, you had better bring a big stick. It’s so easy to lose yourself in the jungle of fun called Twitter, Facebook, and beyond – I mean, seriously, who has not been sucked into Youtube? All of us have!
Fascination is fine and all, but if you’re using social for work, you’d better keep focused. You only have so many hours, and you have deadlines, project commitments, and meetings. So, to help, here are some very straightforward, cut and dry ways you can make your social media management chores go faster and easier.
Let someone else do it
Yep, outsource it! Get an intern, get a VA, negotiate for another department or person to handle it, or go to a virtual worker website (like Fiverr, VWorker, Odesk, etc). Just get it off your desk, especially if it is not the best and highest use of your time.
Get better at it
Take some classes, have some teenager show you how, or read a book. Getting more proficient at a task makes you not only faster, but more confident and better able to be creative. Learn and grow!
Automate it
That’s right – pre-schedule things and auto-post updates. Know your bio-rhythms and your work schedule and do your social media at an hour that is better for you. Pick a time when you can focus on the task and get it done rather than trying to fit it in between other things. Multi-tasking is a disease – take a pill.
Don’t do it
Yes, I said it. Unless you are testing (which studies show most of you out there are not), then you only have a guess to know whether what you’re doing is even working. So, you have no argument other than ego to suggest that you should keep doing things the way you are. Set up some metrics and see just how much of (how fast, how often, how deep, how funny, how serious, how data focused) social updates and interaction your particular audience needs. You can stop doing much of what you’re doing, I’m guessing.
Don’t look at me like that…
You might poo-pooh these suggestions, but truthfully, so much of our work gets dressed up in habit and crazy stupid requirements that we don’t always see the easy path. Pick one of the above and get the work done. Done is better than not. Easy is better than hard. Tame that monster!
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I agree that it is important to stay focused when it comes to managing social media. I do not agree with your suggestion to outsource your social media to an intern. The purpose of social media is to interact with the customer and stay on top of what is being said about your brand or product. Typically, an intern does not know your brand inside and out or how to respond to customer complaints.
My suggestion would be to move up “don’t do it” to the number one position if you don’t have the time or the knowledge to handle social media. What is the point of setting up a Twitter account to auto-post one way conversations?
If you can’t afford to feed the monster on a regular basis, by all means, don’t engage with it in the first place.
I agree with much you have said, Nancy. I think, when you consider the logistics and mechanics of all the tasks needed for socmed mgmt, there are activities needed that a junior level or intern level employee would be perfect to perform. In fact, it would be a nitty gritty way for them to learn first hand the skinny on who is following, who is chatting, etc. Auto dm’s need to be deleted, follow backs (if you are not automating so as to avoid following crap bots) need to be done, data pulls for reports and more. There is plenty of work to be done.
Although quite important, interacting with the customer is only one of the business purposes of social. Listening to the market is another. Sales and brand dev/mgmt is another. SEO and search positioning is another. It all needs attention and strategy.
Being there, even if a company is new and clunky, is a good idea. And, if you auto post stuff you would also share manually anyway, why not? With the level of work needed, if we can get creative, we will have more time for more interactions.
Lastly, a great content strategy is crucial and positions a brand as a valuable resource when done well. Curating that content and then assigning someone else to load it up in a publishing tool adding trackable links is a good idea, IMO. Add in responsive interaction and success is likely.
I just think there are ways to do socmed mgmt beyond hands on only for all team members, especially executives. They need to be there but so do support team members.