Happy 2012 everyone!! We last left off in 2011 with a Social Media Outline. Now that you have your outline, we can manage your social media campaign. Since you have a plan in order, you now need to handle and manage it. Executing your plan is just as important as establishing a plan to begin with. The most important resource in controlling your social media schedule is time. Commitment is essential in scheduling activities and time to attend to those activities. Social media marketing is a form of art, treat it that way and you will see great returns on your product. Remember social media is a part of your overall online marketing and online marketing is a part of your overall marketing.
- Step 1 – Schedule days for social media setting up a certain day and time for social media management is a great way to control your plan and content. Many business people block a certain time out of the day or week, like Friday afternoon, to tackle marketing related activities.
- Step 2 – Put your schedule in a book of events or calendar. This ensures you know what you have coming up and allows for ample planning. Whether you use google calendar, outlook, eventslink etc utilize these project management software tools to schedule your social media activities without giving chance to anything falling through the cracks.
- Step 3 – Create a dashboard for your social media. Social media efforts require many tasks like posting though multiple venues, monitoring visibility on social media outlets, using tools to distribute content, and measuring results using different analytical tools. Instead of jumping back and forth through his all, a dashboard can display all this content at once and save you valuable time. Goojet, iGoogle, Hootsuite, Netvibes, and MarketingProfs offer great free customizable dashboards to help you keep your content in order.
Randall Jefferson 