A lot of businesses don’t care to be involved in social media shenanigans because they know that a tangled web can be woven.
While social media is a good place to get lots of eyes on your business and grow your brand presence, it’s also a way to waste a lot of time and/or sully your rep.
Even if you only spend an hour a day on social media which doesn’t seem like much, if you use that hour in a way that hurts rather than enhances your business, you’re looking at 365 hours of social media activity that could essentially destroy your reputation or yield next to nothing sales-wise because you weren’t on your business communication game.
The best way to make use of your time spent as a professional using social media:
- Limit the number of hours you spend on social media each day.
- Maintain a posting schedule each day.
Of course, you’ll want a good portion of that to be comprised of your business posts to communicate what’s going on in your world and with your audience.
Each time you share something valuable, you want to inspire people to take action. These actions can include:
- Sign up for your list
- Contact you for a quote
- Make a purchase
- Other
What’s the “other?” Some alternate actions they can take could be…
- Click a link that leads to an informative article on your website.
- Sign up for an event that you’re running.
- Click a link that goes to a survey for them to take.
- Download a file.
- Do a homework assignment.
- Answer some questions.
- Join a membership.
- Sign up for a group that you run.
- Anything else related to your business.
Use Timing to Your Advantage on Social Media
You might also wish to get into some conversations on social media just as a way to reinforce your social presence and build your reputation as an authority in your niche.
To do this, determine the best times and days of the week to be seen.
Does social media get busy on Monday morning? Are people more likely to sign up for things on Tuesdays and Thursdays? Will you get a burst of engagement on a Sunday afternoon?
Figure out the best times to post and then commit to showing up at those times.
Give yourself a social media posting and commenting time limit
Devote, say, half an hour to an hour to these activities. Be sure to craft your best professional responses to any posts where people might have questions or want to learn something in your niche.
Communicate clearly
Try to be as clear as possible in your communication on social media. Less is more. This is about the quality of the message, not the quantity of posts or word count.
If you post one really good informative and detailed post that helps one person today, then you will have succeeded in your goal of helping someone believe in and trust your expertise.
Beyond that, anybody who stops by the conversation also has the potential to view you as an expert. So the one intelligent, well-crafted post is compounded in influence many times over.
Don’t be sloppy on social media
Avoid doing the drive-by post. You’ll be forced to come back and explain what you meant, or backtrack on your words. Why is this no good? Because each post or comment can potentially be seen by different people. And there’s no guarantee that the same people are going to read the next comment or the one after that, and so forth.
Some will only see one comment that you wrote, reply to that comment, and go away. They’re not returning will ultimately create a certain opinion of you which may or may not be flattering depending on what you posted.
To summarize:
- Set a posting and commenting schedule.
- Limit your time spent on social media.
- Post intelligently, be thorough, then exit the conversation.
- Look for a few opportunities to advise people, then call it a day.
- Always position yourself as an expert.