It’s crazy to think that social media wasn’t a part of our lives 20 years ago. Now, life events “never really happened” if they weren’t tweeted, posted or shared, and companies are expanding their marketing departments to include a Social Media Specialist (or even a full social media department). Today, social media is the place where people go to vent, announce big news and stay in touch with one another. Even though it’s all digital, it’s a very human thing, and every industry needs to take advantage of this common-day “human integration platform.”
Fact: Social media is for every business. If your social media strategy is non-existent because you claim, “my business wouldn’t do well on social media,” you’re holding yourself back. Sorry for the hard truth, but this excuse has been used far too many times.
Take Charmin for example. They are DOMINATING social media (with almost 70K Twitter followers and over 1 million Facebook fans!), and toilet paper is anything but glamorous or fun. With funny hashtags, quirky videos and quick responses to tweets, Charmin has utilized social media to bring out the brand’s personality and voice. Let’s put it this way: if a toilet paper brand can find a way to make themselves relevant and interesting on social media, your business can too!
With social media not going anywhere anytime soon, it’s time for business owners to realize it’s becoming bigger and better every day. It’s okay if you don’t know how much time is worth spending on social media; in fact, many businesses don’t. We’ve created a detailed checklist of social media tasks your business should include in your daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly processes.
Daily Social Media Processes
- Respond to inbound social media messages: Social media pages are becoming the #1 spot for customers to write reviews or ask questions. Because of this, it’s important to engage with these proactive customers in a timely manner.
- Start conversations with fans: Create response-evoking posts/questions to connect with your fans. Keep in mind, most brands have very outspoken fans they can utilize for some word-of-mouth brand advocacy; engage with these fans as much as possible.
- Post to Twitter 4-6 times: Surprisingly, this is the tweeting average for most brands, but for good reason. There are over 500 million tweets posted everyday; by tweeting up to six times a day, you will have more exposure and will be less likely to fall into the Twitter abyss. Also, don’t stress too hard about hashtags, as they may decrease your clicks.
- Post to Facebook 1-2 times: Facebook is always updating its News Feed algorithm, so it’s difficult to say how many posts are appropriate for the social media powerhouse. As long as you post content at least once a day that’s not too promotional (which can penalize your organic reach), you should be in ship shape. Read up on some effective Facebook strategies to help you with your posts.
- Post 2-4 times to Google+: Wait, Google+ is still important? Although it’s up for debate, it’ still wise to keep this platform in mind since snippets of your Google+ page do appear in search results.
Weekly Social Media Processes
- Brainstorm on social media tactics: Even though there are plenty of social media tools out there to ease the collaboration process, you should still take time to plan future efforts with your team.
- Review social media analytics: Use a tool like Hootsuite to measure the effectiveness of your social media outreach and find out what works and doesn’t work for your audience. Use your findings to shift your social media strategies moving forward.
- Encourage employee advocacy: Your most powerful brand advocates are your co-workers. Encourage them weekly to share some of your content on their social media profiles to boost your word-of-mouth marketing.
Monthly Social Media Processes
- Review your social media strategy: Auditing your social media strategy can be a lengthy process, so aim to do this on a monthly basis. The process is much like checking your analytics, but a much more in-depth look into your data to help you discover the best approach for your social media marketing.
- Collaborate with internal departments: Your other departments have plenty of ideas to use social media marketing to achieve some of their own goals. Sit down with these departments monthly and brainstorm how you can help achieve their goals through social media.
- Take a social media break: Probably didn’t expect to read this one, did you? With constant shifts and changes, social media can be overwhelming to keep up with. Once a month, spend a few days away from social media to avoid being burnt out from it.
Quarterly Social Media Processes
- Review KPIs: Once you’ve collected three months’ worth of social media data, you can see how your pages have performed based on your key performance indicators to measure your performance.
- Alter your goals: It’s common to bite off more than you can chew with social media, so refining your goals quarterly will help you keep a realistic view of your capabilities. If you have exceeded your goals, challenge yourself more this upcoming quarter.
- Review your team: As you can see, social media is a big job for anyone to take on. Based on your quarter’s performance and goals you’ve set, consider whether or not you need to hire someone to assist you in the future.
So, to answer the question vaguely, you can spend as much or as little time on social media as you want. There is no “required” amount of time to clock in in order to achieve social media success, but time does need to be spent on it everyday. Like all things in business, you’ll get back whatever effort you put into social media, so it’s wise to spend a good amount of your marketing efforts toward social media.
Become the Charmin of your industry (unless you happen to be in the toilet paper industry, in that case step up your game) and create a social media presence worth following!
