Michelle Krasniak - Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies

In this chapter, we discuss how to set up a schedule to keep your social media activity from draining all your available time. If you have employees, both you and your company may benefit if you delegate some of the social media tasking to them. You can also supplement your in-house staff with limited assistance from outside professionals.

For small businesses, it’s your money or your life. If you can’t afford to hire help to work on social media, you carve it out of the time you’ve allocated to other marketing activities — unless, of course, you want to add a minimum of another two hours to your workweek.

Finally, this chapter carries a word of caution. Make sure that everyone posting to a social media outlet knows your policy about what is and isn’t acceptable, as well as how to protect the company’s reputation and confidential material. As you launch your marketing boat onto the churning waters of social media, you should ensure that everyone is wearing a legal life preserver.

As you know from the rest of your business experience, if something isn’t important enough to schedule, it never gets done. Social media, like the rest of your marketing efforts, can easily be swallowed up by day-to-day demands. You must set aside time for it and assign tasks to specific people.

Allocate a minimum of two hours per week per platform if you’re going to participate in social media, rather than set up pages and abandon them. Otherwise, you simply don’t see a return from your initial investment in setup. If you don’t have much time, stick with the marketing you’re already doing.

Social media can become addictive. If you truly like what you’re doing, the time problem might reverse. Rather than spend too little time, you spend too much. You might find it difficult to avoid the temptation of continually reading what others have to say about your business or spending all your time tweeting, streaming, and posting.

Just as you stick to your initial dollar budget, keep to your initial time budget, at least for the first month until you see what works. After you determine which techniques have the greatest promise, you can rearrange your own efforts as well as your team’s.

Social media marketing is only part of your online-marketing effort, and online marketing is only part of your overall marketing.

One way to control the time you spend on social media is to select specific days and times for it. Many business people set aside regularly recurring blocks of time, such as a quiet Friday afternoon, for marketing-related tasks, whether they’re conducting competitor research, writing press releases or newsletters for the following week, obtaining inbound links, or handling their social media marketing tasks.

Other people prefer to allocate their time early in the morning, at lunchtime, or just before leaving work each evening. The time slot you choose usually doesn’t matter, unless you’re offering a time-dependent service, such as accepting to-go orders for breakfast burritos via Twitter.

Whatever the case, allot time for every task on your Social Media Activity Calendar, followed by the initials of the person responsible for executing the task.

Even if you’re the only person involved, allow time for learning before your official social media launch date. Everyone needs time to observe, to master new tools, to practice posting and responding, to experiment, and to decide what works before rolling out your plan.

Bring your new social media venues online one at a time. This strategy not only helps you evaluate which social media venue works but also reduces stress on you and your staff.

There are as many ways to schedule social media activities as there are companies. Whatever you decide, don’t leave your schedule to chance.

Larger companies may use sophisticated project management software. Some offer a free trial such as Basecamp ( https://basecamp.com ) and Smartsheet ( www.smartsheet.com ), whereas others are available as freemium proprietary solutions, such as MOOVIA ( https://site.moovia.com ) or as open source programs such as GanttProject ( www.ganttproject.biz ). For more options, see http://alternativeto.net/software/smartsheet or www.workzone.com/blog/smartsheet-alternatives . Alternatively, you can schedule tasks using spreadsheet software.

However, the simplest solution may be the best: Calendar software, much of which is free, may be all you need. Paid options may merge schedules for more people and allow customized report formats. Several options are listed in Table 4-1. Look for a solution that lets you

Choose a display by day, week, or month or longer.

List events or tasks in chronological format.

Select different time frames easily.

Easily schedule repeat activities without requiring duplicate data entry.

TABLE 4-1Calendar Software

If several people are involved in a substantial social media effort, select calendar software that lets you synchronize individual calendars, such as Google, Yahoo!, or Thunder Lightning. Figure 4-1 shows a sample of a simple social-marketing calendar on Yahoo! The calendar shows the name of the person responsible. Clicking an event or a task reveals item details, including the time allotted to the task, the sharing level, and whether a reminder is sent and to whom. Figure 4-2 offers an example of an event detail listing in a Google calendar.

Note: Google and Yahoo! require you to set up an account before you can use their calendars.