By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent
I’m a firm believer that planning is critical to the success of any small business marketing campaign. If you’ve already planned your social media campaign, kudos to you. If not, here are a few tips to help you satisfy that need to “do something” without derailing your forthcoming plan.
- Plan the time to share and engage. It’s easy to set-up a Facebook page or a Twitter profile, but no one gets excited about old, stale posts. If you want to start the year by connecting with your fans you should, but plan resources for maintaining the stream. Set aside a few minutes each morning to converse with your fans or assign a team member to do it throughout the day. But, don’t start something that you can’t maintain.
- Baby steps. It’s easy to be bedazzled by new exciting social media tools, but stick with what you know. If you have a lot of photos, consider starting a Flickr page. If you are already on Facebook with a personal profile, start a fan page for your business. Start with what you know and assess anything new when you create your campaign strategy. This will save you time and provide more effective engagement with your fans.
- Connect your profiles. Social media can be a time suck, so save some time by using external tools to sync your status updates. Use the “Selective Twitter” app to connect your Twitter stream to your Facebook fan page. Connect your blog posts to Twitter using a variety of apps like Twitter Tools. Use a tool like Ping.fm or Hellotxt to update your status across profiles at the same time.
By keeping it simple, but getting involved you can dip your toes in the social media marketing waters while putting your campaign together. Its fun and you will feel like plan is off to a great start!
Beth J. Bates consults with Hinge on social media tool selection and strategy and helps its clients find effective ways to leverage these new mediums to meet business goals.
