Social Media Management Tips For Business
Posted by Chris Hodge on Tue, Nov 15, 2011
Social media management is a monster. One moment you feel a rush of accomplishment, such
as when you set up half a dozen accounts that are all linked together and tell you everything you could possibly want to know. The next moment, you may feel like a total failure, such as when those half dozen accounts have about as many people paying attention to them.
One issue with inbound marketing, which is a fundamental part of social media management, is how it depends on a lot of work coupled with a lot of patience. This can be very challenging, since the part of your personality which pushes you to work hard gets very frustrated when there are few results.
Go-getters like you tend to consider being patient about as useful as chewing bubble gum and scratching off lottery tickets. However, the following are a few tips to make your social media a lot more manageable, which is a solid step toward making it very profitable.
Keep your efforts together
One mistake a lot of marketers make is trying to do too much. While ambition is great, keeping dozens of profiles you rarely update will do far more harm to your business than having a few profiles you really focus on. Consider your image -- if it isn't consistent across all of your profiles, you'll either have outdated information that makes you look amateurish, or you'll have inconsistent info that can hurt your credibility. Do your best to keep your social media management time under two hours per day, so you can be responsive to people contacting you and keep all your accounts congruent.
Allow commenting on what you produce
Everyone has both off days and times when you're totally in the zone. If you have an issue and someone brings it up, you have three options: delete any messages about it, address it publicly or communicate privately with the whistle blower. If you really knock a blog post, a tweet or any other professional activity out of the park, allow your customers and followers to leave you testimonials. This is the best kind of advertising you can get, and it costs you nothing. This is the heart of marketing through social media.
Network laterally
Way too many marketers never stop selling. While it's great to always be on the lookout for customers, you also need to keep your eyes open to potential partners and employees. Networking is an unpredictable process, and taking a little extra time to understand that people who engage your content may not just be idly chatting with you. They may be potential partners waiting to help you grow your business and boost your sales considerably. They may also be potential employees waiting for their chance to join your team.
Maintain your image across the board
Your image and message both need to be consistent across everything that can be traced to you and your business. Your logo should be on everything, and your product descriptions need to be consistent. Naturally, you can switch up some things, such as the way you tell stories, based on your intended audience. But it needs to be obvious at all times that this is your content and it's as fresh as everything else you've produced. Don't fall into the trap of updating infrequently and creating inconsistencies, for the reasons covered in the section on keeping your efforts together.
Switch things up
An old saying goes, "Uniformity is not unity." Just like all marketing, social media management depends on keeping your image and message consistent without sounding like a digital music player looping its only song. No matter how great that song may be, after awhile it starts to sound old. Vary your content by going beyond just selling. Comment on important topics in your industry, offer something special to your loyal fans, and build anticipation for 
your next offering by putting up sneak peeks of it.
You can even initiate a sense of community by starting group discussions that can highlight your expertise and reveal needs and ideas you may have never thought of before. Just keep your content interesting, because people today have no time to wade through boring and repetitive content.
Social media management isn't that mysterious. As long as you stay congruent with who you are, keep your offering robust enough to add value but lean enough to be readily updated and keep involved with others, your success will grow.