social media roundup - 30 minute social media: 7 tips to managing time on social media
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Let’s say you only have 30 minutes a day to dedicate to social media. Can you still maintain an effective presence? Can you jam everything you need to do into 30 minutes? This Social Media Roundup focuses on seven tips you and your social media team can use to maintain an effective social media program with only 30 minutes a day.TRANSCRIPT
Social Media Roundup
30 Minute social media: 7 Tips for managing time on social media
Social Media Roundup
Agenda
Let’s say you only have 30 minutes a day to dedicate to social media. Can
you still maintain an effective presence? Can you jam everything you need to
do into 30 minutes? This Social Media Roundup focuses on seven tips you
and your social media team can use to maintain an effective social media
program with only 30 minutes a day.
Introduction
#1: Prioritize
#2: Set a time for social media
#3: Plan ahead
#4: Schedule your posts and Tweets
#5: Eliminate distractions
#6: Collect best responses
#7: Use alerts
Social Media Roundup
Introduction Not all organizations have a social
media team. In many cases, social
media is not even an individual’s
primary responsibility. For many
people, social media is an additional
task.
So how can you manage a social
media program without a team? How
can you maintain an effective social
media presence if you only have 30
minutes a day to dedicate to social
media?
Maintaining a social media program in
just 30 minutes a day is not easy, but if
you manage your time right and follow
these seven tips, it is possible.
Social Media Roundup
#1: Prioritize There are hundreds of social media
platforms out there. Not all of them are
right for your organization.
Before creating a social media presence,
it’s important to consider which platforms
work best for your organization. Once
you’ve identified the most effective
platforms, stick with them until you have
more time to dedicate to new platforms.
If you only have 30 minutes a day for
social media, maintaining more that two
platforms is a stretch. Make sure you
choose wisely, and understand which
platform helps your organization achieve
its goals. If Facebook is the most
effective social media platform for your
organization, the majority of your 30
minutes should be spent on Facebook.
Social Media Roundup
#2: Set a time for social media When social media management is an
additional task, it’s easy for it to get
pushed lower on your list of priorities. The
pressures of your day-to-day tasks can get
in the way of your social media
management if you’re not careful.
Instead of simply “making time” for social
media when the day allows, set up a
specific time each day that you dedicate
exclusively to social media.
Maybe you can carve out 30 minutes after
lunch, or 30 minutes at the end of the day.
The important part is scheduling the time
and sticking to it. If you try to jam social
media management into a different time
slot every day, it’s much easier to forget.
Social Media Roundup
#3: Plan ahead An effective social media program is
always accompanied by a
comprehensive social media strategy.
A detailed social media strategy can
help take the pressure off of you
during those 30 minutes you dedicate
to social media each day.
If you’ve taken the time to identify
your organization’s communication
priorities and you’ve drafted posts
and Tweets in advance, you can
spend the majority of your 30 minutes
each day engaging with your social
media audience. Time spent
engaging is better than time spent
scrambling to find something to post.
Templates for both weekly and single event social media
strategies are available on the Army’s Slideshare site:
http://www.slideshare.net/usarmysocialmedia. You can also
learn more about social media planning by checking out this
Social Media Roundup: http://tinyurl.com/8pr2man.
Social Media Roundup
#4: Schedule your posts and Tweets With limited time to dedicate to a
social media program, social media
scheduling tools can be valuable
assets.
There several tools designed to
help users schedule posts.
Facebook features a function
allowing users to schedule posts
up to 6 months in advance.
Social media dashboards like
Hootsuite and TweetDeck are
designed to help social media
administrators schedule content
making it easier to maintain a
social media presence with limited
time. TweetDeck is one of many social media dashboards that help
social media managers track multiple social media accounts while
also providing scheduling options.
For more about
Facebook’s
scheduling
options, check
out this Social
Media Roundup:
http://tinyurl.com/
8kf9u5z.
Social Media Roundup
#5: Eliminate distractions Certain social media platforms are designed
to suck you in and keep you there for as long
as possible. If you have only 30 minutes a
day to dedicate to social media, be careful
not to fall into these social media traps.
If you manage an organization’s Facebook
Page, it is likely connected to your personal
profile. Don’t spend time on your profile
during these 30 minutes, go to straight to the
Page and focus.
Also, if you’ve dedicated 30 minutes of time
to social media, only do social media-related
tasks during those 30 minutes. Turn off your
email if you have to, close all the other non-
social media related work on your desktop if
necessary. Focus all your attention on the
task at hand.
Social Media Roundup
#6: Collect best responses
Ideally, you would have more than 30 minutes
to dedicate to social media each day. Social
media requires planning, posting, searching
and most importantly, engaging.
It’s not uncommon to spend the majority of
your 30 minutes each day engaging with your
audience and answering their questions.
Typically, the questions asked by your
audience on Twitter and Facebook will be
similar in nature, and over time, you’ll answer
the same question dozens of times.
To save time, maintain a spreadsheet or a
word document with answers to frequently
asked questions. This way, you’ll spend a few
seconds cutting and pasting answers rather
than several minutes trying to recreate the
wheel.
The Frequently asked questions tab above can be
found on the Army’s Facebook Page
(http://tinyurl.com/9gkoeg6). It is not necessary to
create a similar tab for your Facebook Page. It is just
as effective to maintain a word document with pre-
crafted responses than you can cut and paste when
you need them.
Social Media Roundup
#7: Use alerts Collecting content is an important part of your social media planning. Since the
majority of your 30 minutes will be spent posting content from your strategy and
engaging with your audience, you won’t have a lot of time to search for content.
Setting up email alerts can help you collect content while you’re working on your
other job-related tasks.
Search engines like Google and Yahoo provide users with the option to set up an
email alert so that whenever a news story with a specific term is identified, the link
is sent directly to your email inbox.
Alert terms could include:
Unit name
Leader names
Unit nickname
Unit slogan
Operation name
Name of initiative
http://www.google.com/alerts
http://alerts.yahoo.com/home.php
Social Media Roundup
Contact information
Have questions? Please feel free to
reach out to us at the Online and
Social Media Division
OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS PENTAGON
10/10/2012
Email:
To review and download past editions of the
Social Media Roundup, visit our Slideshare site
at: http://www.slideshare.net/usarmysocialmedia.
All Social Media Roundups are authorized to be
distributed to a broader audience.