How To Start, Manage and Grow Your Social Network Without a Huge Time Commitment

Fortunately, building an audience doesn’t take long with the right strategy. Pick a few that you consider successful, and examine the kind of content they are sharing, how often they’re sharing it, and whether people are engaging with it. Perfect Your Presence Consistency is key with your online presence, especially if you are maintaining accounts on multiple platforms. That means 80 percent (or one in every five) of your social network posts should be entertaining and interesting to your audience but not directly about your brand. Less engagement means the algorithms for that social media platform will start replacing your content with other things in your audience’s main feed. If you have accounts on multiple social media platforms, use them to cross promote! Invite your followers on one platform to find you on the others, and make sure you include the links in your bio. Buying followers is against the terms of service of almost every major social media network. Engagement can be done any time you find yourself with a few free minutes during the day. While using a social media manager is great for distributing the initial posts, make sure you have the individual social platform’s apps available for engagement.

Author: Anna Izenman / Source: Business 2 Community

Owning or managing all marketing for a small business is hard! Without a large staff (or, let’s be honest, any staff) you probably find yourself pulling long days and fulfilling a variety of roles from janitor to CEO and everything in between.

Previously on the Three Girls blog we’ve covered why social media marketing is so vital for success, and now I want to take an in-depth look at how you can fit managing a social network or two into your already overflowing days – even if you’re starting from square one.

Building Your Social Network Quickly

If you’re starting from scratch, posting on social media can feel like yelling into the Grand Canyon. Is anyone out there? Fortunately, building an audience doesn’t take long with the right strategy. Here are some quick insights to get you started.

Choose Your Social Network Wisely

Don’t spread yourself too thin by trying to maintain a presence on every social media platform. Like Ron Swanson from the show Parks & Rec says, “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.” It’s much better to have a strong presence concentrated on one or two sites where your core constituencies exist than seem noncommittal on four or five.

If you have a hard time deciding, take a look at what your competitors are doing. Pick a few that you consider successful, and examine the kind of content they are sharing, how often they’re sharing it, and whether people are engaging with it. What works for your competitors will likely work for you. More importantly, what doesn’t work for them probably won’t work for you either.

Perfect Your Presence

Consistency is key with your online presence, especially if you are maintaining accounts on multiple platforms. Even though the platforms may be visually different, your brand should “feel” the same across your social network. This makes your profiles easy to recognize and gives them the desired professional appearance. A few things all your profiles should include:

A recognizable username, preferably identical across all platforms.
A recognizable profile photo. You can’t go wrong with the company logo!
A brief description of your company, packed with relevant industry keywords.
A trackable link that directs visitors to your website.

Curate Your Content

Make sure that your presence is actually worth following. If you have a good understanding of your audience, it shouldn’t be hard to tell which types of content they will find engaging.

Following the 80/20 rule will help keep them engaged. That means 80 percent (or one in every five) of your social network posts should be entertaining and interesting to your audience but not directly about your brand. These can include images, videos, articles, quotes and more that can be easily enjoyed and shared. The other 20 percent can be self-promotional like special offers, discounts, blog promotions and anything that links back to your website.

Be Consistent

Sharing interesting links as you find them is a recipe for inconsistency. You may have a day when you’re too busy to peruse the internet, and your social media accounts go without new content. If it happens regularly, any engagement momentum you have built up will start to slow down. Less engagement means the algorithms for that social media platform will start replacing your content with other things in your audience’s main feed.

On the other hand, you don’t want to post so often that your audience finds your presence overwhelming and annoying. A good target is once or twice a day, every day. Take the time to seek out interesting content for your profiles, and build a file that you can pull from and add to whenever needed.

To help with this, consider using a social network management tool like Buffer or Hootsuite which can help you schedule content days, weeks, or even months in advance. That way you can make sure your profiles are remaining active even when you are on vacation or enjoying the holidays.