Why is it that social media marketing seems to take up so much of our time? It’s so easy to pop on to Twitter or Facebook for “just a few minutes” only to find hours later that it has sucked you in and kept you away from that other work you should have been doing.

I don’t by any stretch of the imagination claim to have mastered the art of social media time management, but I thought I’d share some tips with you to help minimise the amount of wasted time spent on social media sites without giving up on social media marketing altogether!

• Stick to a schedule – decide in advance exactly what you want to accomplish on each social media platform each day and how long it should take you then schedule that exact time into your calendar. Avoid checking your accounts on an ad hoc basis as this inevitably leads to time wastage.
• Plan cleverly – schedule your social media time before meetings or appointments so you can’t get carried away.
• Minimise the distractions – figure out what distracts you the most and take steps to control it. For instance create a shortcut to take you straight to your Facebook business page without going via your personal account if it’s too tempting to click on those personal notifications.
• Use timesaving tools – using a tool such as Hootsuite or Social Oomph to schedule some of your tweets and updates in advance can help you to go into your accounts less often and thereby minimise distraction. A simple alarm set on a timer can also help remind you when you’ve spent enough time on a task.
• Create content in bulk – sometimes it can be more efficient to create your content in batches, e.g. cranking out a number of blog posts at once or researching several interesting news links to share on Twitter or Facebook, then use a tool like those mentioned above to post them out at regular intervals.

Do you have any other tips to share with us on how to save time on social media marketing?

I blogged recently about creating quality content. Once you’ve gone to the trouble of creating great content, that people actually want to read, it makes sense to get the most out of it, so here are some suggestions for how to do that.

Syndicate your content

It seems obvious, but it’s surprising how often it gets forgotten in the rush to move onto the next item on your to do list. Whether it’s a blog post or a new page on your website make sure you share it with as many different people as possible. Tools like NetworkedBlogs make this easier by automatically sending your blog posts out to your Twitter and Facebook feeds and save you having to remember.

Social bookmarking is another good way to get your content out there. Sites like Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon are all useful, as well as niche bookmarking sites that relate to your industry. Just make sure you follow the guidelines and don’t only bookmark your own content.

If you write an email newsletter then you can also use this to point subscribers towards content that they might find useful too.

Make it easy for others to share

Getting others to share your content is even more effective than doing it yourself as it will then be read by people out of your network too. Hopefully you’ve already got social media buttons added to each of your web pages and blog posts to make it easy for others to share them on their favourite social networking sites. An occasional little nudge or reminder asking people to share a particular article if they find it useful won’t do any harm either.

Internal linking

If you’re referring to a topic already covered in a previous blog post or on another website page then link directly to it to make it easy for people to find other relevant content. Internal linking is important within your website and blog and helps both search engines and readers to find more of your content.

Recycle content

If you’ve written a good article or blog post it won’t take you long to rewrite it (to avoid duplicate content which the search engines frown on) so that it’s suitable for use on another website or blog. Writing guest posts on another blog or articles for another website is a great way to get more exposure for your own website as well as a link back. Using existing content and rewriting it saves you from having to come up with another idea or having do any additional research for a brand new article.

Do you know of any other great ways to get the most out of your content? Please add a comment to share your suggestions.

Most of the bigger brands and many smaller ones now have their own customised Facebook welcome page and you may be wondering whether your business should too.

What is a Facebook welcome page?

For those of you who are not sure what a Facebook welcome page is, it’s a specially designed page that visitors land on when they first find your page in Facebook. It’s almost like a mini website within Facebook that they initially land on instead of the usual wall or feed.

First time visitors are welcomed to your Facebook page with this attractive branded page, and can also see any deals or new products that you want to promote on there.

Why should you have one?

There are several good reasons for having a custom Facebook welcome page:

• It welcomes first time visitors with an attractive branded page, letting them know a little bit more about your business and what you do.
• You can add a call to action encouraging them to ‘Like’ your Facebook page and explain the benefits of doing so, which makes it far more likely that they’ll click that button.
• Some businesses use their welcome page to promote deals, events or competitions or to call attention to new products.
• Having a custom page reassures people that you know what you’re doing on Facebook and makes you look more professional, hopefully encouraging them to engage with you.

What should you include?

Your Facebook welcome page should reflect your current social media marketing objectives, so think about what action you want visitors to take when they land on it. This could be to ‘Like’ your page, to engage with you on other social media platforms such as Twitter or your blog or whatever else is important to your business marketing goals. Make sure that your page contains an appropriate call to action that stands out clearly and leads them to this next step as quickly and easily as possible.

Let visitors know what sort of information you share on your wall and how they can join in. Lay out the benefits of engaging with your business on Facebook to increase the chances that they’ll ‘Like’ your page and come back again. If appropriate you can also include links to your other social media accounts and your blog’s RSS feed and encourage them to connect with you there too.

As you can see, a custom Facebook welcome page can improve your ‘Like’ conversions and act as an additional promotional tool. Without one you could be missing out on a lot of opportunities and failing to make the most of your Facebook marketing.

Facebook advertising can be a great way to reach your target marketing, this only really works for business to consumer companies where they are looking to sell to the end user.  Some of the things you need to consider before deciding whether this is a valuable way for you to advertise are:

• Who are my target audience
• Is there a specific geographical location
• What age group am I targeting
• Any specific marital status
• Likes and interests of my target market

If you cannot narrow it down then Facebook advertising is unlikely to work for you.  If you can be very specific about who you are trying to reach then advertising in this way can be incredibly cost effective, but again you need to consider your ultimate aim of the campaign.  Are you looking to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Drive traffic to your website
• Create leads
• Create online sales

If you are looking to focus on brand awareness then you may not need to be as specific, but if you are looking to generate actual sales then the more detailed you can be when setting up the campaign then the better your chances of success.  A couple of examples for you, one of the businesses where this can work incredibly well is a Driving School, you can target all 16 and 17 year olds in a certain geographical area. Where this doesn’t work so well is if you are looking to generate sales of cosmetics and your target market is all females between the ages of 16 and 60.  Your likelihood of making sales is much smaller than with the Driving School Example.

If you are unsure, then please seek advice first before you spend any money on something.

This is a question that seems to crop up a lot. It can be overwhelming to manage too many different social media accounts when you’re just getting started with social media marketing, so naturally you want to choose the most effective one.

Unfortunately there is no one right answer for every business. Facebook works wonderfully for some businesses and dismally for others, ditto with Twitter, LinkedIn and all the rest.

Business to business social media marketing tends to work well in LinkedIn, while business to consumer seems to work better in Facebook. This is a generalisation though and there will naturally be exceptions.

Different social media platforms tend to be more important for different industries too. For instance, in the education industry YouTube can be extremely effective, but in the Print and Newspaper industry it is not nearly as useful.

Here are a few examples of the most important social media for various industries*:

• The industries that seem to benefit most from Facebook are Fitness & Wellness, Retail, Travel & Tourism, Real Estate and Non Profit.
• Twitter is the most important social media for Telecoms.
• Businesses in the Development & Construction industry will usually find LinkedIn to be the most effective for them.
• Blogging is most important for those in the Professional Services, Medical Health, Manufacturing, Technology, Marketing Agency, Financial & Mortgage, Government & Politics and Print & Newspaper industries, though it can still be very effective for others.
• YouTube and Flickr can work very well alongside other social media marketing for some industries but are not usually recommended on their own.

*Source: WSI Social Media Experts Think Tank, July 2009

If you’re still not sure where to start, think about your target market and then decide which social media they are most likely to frequent. Of course your own personality and social media knowledge will also affect how effective you are on various platforms, so perhaps the best place to start is where you feel most comfortable.

Whichever social media platform you choose to start with, it’s important to make sure you understand how to use it properly to engage with people. Building relationships is one of the key benefits of social media, so focus on that and you won’t go far wrong.

A lot of businesses will set up a Facebook Page but then don’t really know what sort of content to post on it. Here are some suggestions about what (and what not) to publish as well as how often you should be adding updates.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to use your Facebook Page as yet another place to publish self-promotional material. You’ve got to remember that Facebook is a social media platform and is therefore all about interaction and engagement, not advertising (if you want to advertise on Facebook use Facebook Adverts). You need to use your Wall to build a sense of community with your fans and provide a place where they can interact with you and vice versa.

The more interesting and engaging your updates are, and the more comments and interaction you get, the more Facebook will show them, so the quality of your updates is very important.

So what sort of updates fit the bill?

A lot of fans will have “Liked” your page in order to take advantage of promotional offers, and these are the sorts of posts that often get shared with their friends, so take advantage of this by creating special offers for your fans and posting them on your Page.

Content that relates to Facebook itself is also usually really popular with those who use it, so consider posting comments, questions or information about the social media portal itself as it relates to your business or industry.

You can also take advantage of popular topics in general and create content, questions, etc that relate to these to post on your Facebook Page. For example, these can be about popular TV shows that everyone is currently talking about, celebrities or news items.

Once you know what to post about, how often should you be adding updates?

Dan Zarrella at Hubspot found that people don’t want to be swamped with messages all the time and the optimum seemed to be to post approximately every other day. That way you’re not overwhelming them with updates but you’re still keeping in contact regularly. Interestingly he also found that posting in the mornings and on the weekends was best in terms of engagement, as this is when most people tend to be on Facebook.

Ultimately, if you remember that Facebook is about interaction and community you won’t go too far wrong. If you’re an avid Facebook user yourself then think about what you like and what irritates you when you’re looking at your own Newsfeed and bear this in mind when posting content on your business’s Facebook Page.

Well first to the obvious, to grow your Facebook fanbase you need to have something that will make someone want to like your page.  As well as making sure that your posts are not only relevant to your industry, they need to be engaging for the reader too, so much so that they will value your expertise and want to learn more from you.

One of the things that people often overlook is actually encouraging people to like your page in the first page.  By having a branded welcome page you can create call to actions in the same way you would with your website.  Also, when you post, ask people to share it with their contacts.

Don’t forget that you can reach potential new fans in other places too, for example if you have a blog, then why not include a link and ask people to like your Facebook page.  Many websites have social media links on every page to make it easy for their visitors to connect and communicate with them in a number of different ways.

Make sure that you engage with people too, there is no point asking for people to comment or Like your page if all you do is have a continuous stream of posts, make sure if someone comments on your page that you communicate with them, this will encourage more people to like your page and that particular person to share your post amongst their own network.

The more you engage with people, the more you will appear in the newsfeed and the more likely you are to attract new fans.  But a word of caution, this is not Twitter and posting every two minutes throughout the day will have a negative effect, people will get fed up of your posts and ultimately you will lose those people that have already liked your page.

So in summary, to get more Facebook fans you need to create relevant engaging content that is easy to share and be active in communicating with your current fanbase.  It really is that simple, but it can take time so keep at it, it will work for you.

Find out more about Facebook for Business

The first thing to remember is that a profile is about an individual person and not a business, if you are looking to market your business using Facebook then you must have a business page.  One of the great things about Facebook is the amount of functionality that it has, there are so many applications that you can use to help your business and you cannot use these effectively if you have a profile set up.

BranchOut is a new app that aims to bring business networking to Facebook. It pulls together information from the profiles of your friends about the companies they work for and have previously worked for, as well as any other business data that it can find, enabling users to leverage their Facebook connections for career or business opportunities.