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?

Following on from my previous posts An Introduction to Google+ and Creating a Google+ Page for your business, this time we’ll take a look at some ways to leverage the + power of social media.

Those with their own website or online business can explore a whole new world of social media marketing with an efficient social profile Page using Google+. It’s fun and easy and can be profitable too.

• Google+ posts that are sent to “Public” rank quite well in Google search results By merging Google properties into Google+ and integrating it with the serach engines you can have a significant impact on where your company appears in the results pages.
• Something else you can do is manage circles by distributing clients into specific categories and then share different posts, news or offers with the various circles. This allows you to connect with fans and share information with clients easily.
• Use Hangouts to engage your customers and colleagues. This is high quality video chat that gives you the opportunity to interact with followers face to face, making it much easier to get to know them, answer questions and also get immediate feedback on products and services.
• Another use of Hangouts is for video conferencing and to push live events and seminars to customers.
• Make use of the Google+ badge to promote your site and your Google+ Page. It links your website and page and makes others aware you’re there. If a visitor likes your site and clicks the icon they are taken directly to your Google+ Page and can share and follow your posts.
• Google+ Direct enables people to just enter a “+” in front of your business name when searching on Google in order to get directly to your Google+ Page.
• The +1 button on Google+ is an excellent way for customers to spread the word about your business and let others know about your Google+ presence. You are also able to connect your website +1’s to your Google+ Page +1’s, which is great as people are more inclined to trust recommendations from people they already know.
• Another useful Google+ tool, Ripples, allows you to keep an eye on your posts and information as they move across social networks, so it’s easy to figure out who is sharing and who is paying attention to your content.
• Analytics provide information about your page’s followers and visitors as well as general traffic and social activity around your business.

What makes Google+ for business unique is that it has blurred the lines between personal social networks, e.g. Facebook, and business networks, e.g. LinkedIn. It really is a social media game changer.

As I mentioned in my last post, An introduction to Google +, businesses are starting to see the value of Google+ with its new Pages feature. This post will look at how to go about creating a Google+ Page for your business.

Google Plus Pages have a small square icon next to the business name to differentiate them from Profiles. Users can add your Page to their circles (which helps increas your follower count), take a look at your business information and check out your business’s photos.

Here’s how to create a Page for your business and take advantage of Google+:

• In order to create a Page for your business, you need a Google+ Profile. Clicking on the “+You” link at the top left of your Gmail dashboard or iGoogle page will take you to the Profile creation page.
• Click Create a Google+ page on the right of your stream and choose a category to begin. For a smaller, less well known business, Local businesses is a good choice. For companies and larger known businesses, Product or brand would work. Company, institution or organization is mostly for those businesses that don’t directly sell something, e.g. not-for-profits.
• Personalise your page by adding a photo or logo and a tagline, and continue with an introduction, information and contact information, then finish with a photo strip of 5 photos.

You’re now ready to start engaging with the Google+ community. A business Page can create Circles (networks) and post information and news on its feed. Don’t forget to add your Google+ Page details to your website or blog and to share it across your other networks.

In my next post I’ll discuss some of the ways you can leverage the + power of social media.

Google+ seems to be one of social media’s hottest new networks, with its popularity growing tremendously since it started in June 2011 as a test version. Its slogan is “real-life sharing—rethought for the web” and it features integration across a number of Google products, including Google Buzz and Google Profiles.

As Google+ notices are posted inside your Gmail inbox, you get 100% real-time Gmail deliverability. If your Circle friends Google a subject that you’ve written about on Google+, your comments and links are displayed automatically on page one of Google, giving you free traffic without any back-linking or on-site optimization. These are just some of the things that make us think it is a social media platform that will probably stick around and grow in popularity.

What makes Google+ special?

• It is focused on targeted sharing within social subgroups you’ve set up (your Circles)
• There is also a section within Google+ that is specifically for viewing, editing and managing multimedia, and which includes an image editor as well as privacy options and sharing features.
• It has introduced a new group chat feature called Hangouts. You can click ‘Start a hangout’ to immediately enter a video chat-room and a message will go out to your social circles to let them know that you are ‘hanging out’ and invite them to join you.

Many businesses are already beginning to see the value of building a Google Plus presence, especially with the new Pages feature. A Google+ Page looks similar to a Google+ Profile except that it has a small square icon next to the brand name to indicate that it is a page. Other users can add your brand to their circles, check out your information and browse your photos. Each time someone adds your brand to their circles, it helps to increase your follower count.

Your business needs to get ready to integrate Google+ into its social media marketing strategy, so in my next blog post I’ll look at how to build your Google Plus presence and build a Page for your brand.

I love New Year and how it makes you feel like you have a clean slate to start over with. Whether you kept the resolutions you made for 2011 or not, 2012 offers the opportunity for a fresh start.

If you are a small business owner, social media marketing is one of the areas you should definitely be making some resolutions about. We all have good intentions when it comes to social media but if we want to make sure they become more than just that we need to set some proper goals.

With social media you are much more likely to stick to your resolutions if you turn them into specific and measurable goals. For instance, instead of saying “I will blog/tweet/share more regularly” try setting yourself goals such as:

• I will write two blog posts every week
• I will share something interesting on Twitter/Facebook every day
• I will increase my followers to xxx by the end of January
• I will reply to every comment or @ tweet within xxx amount of time
• etc

and then decide how you are going to go about doing that, e.g. schedule time into your calendar, put a reminder on your phone, start work 15 minutes earlier, check tweets while getting your mid morning coffee, etc.

I do, however, still think that we need to remember that social media is about relationships and engagement and some facets of this are less measurable than others. When I look at the amount of self promotional noise that is posted on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, etc I think that there’s a good case for some of these less tangible resolutions:

• I will only share information that is useful to others
• I will chat to people without trying to sell to them or blow my own trumpet
• I will only follow people that I’m actually interested in on Twitter
• I will always be honest and transparent

Somehow I think these will be much harder for many of us to stick to!

Happy New Year!

Social Media has been around for a while now, many businesses have jumped on the bandwagon and are actively networking using sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  With all this information around about how to do it, why are so many still getting it wrong and using it as a platform to try and directly sell to us?

It’s one of my pet hates to check up on a group in LinkedIn and find it is littered with posts telling everyone how fantastic they are and how they can help them and their business, please stop it.  It does worry me that if it continues to be flooded with self-promotion then people will just simply get fed up with the whole thing.  It seems the whole givers gain philosophy has been twisted around the wrong way and people are simply out to see what they can get.  It really ruins the whole experience for so many people.

Another (and there are many) pet hate is being bombarded with spam via the social networks, yes I connected with you because I am interested in what you have to say, yes I want to learn more about your business, but no I don’t want a daily email trying to persuade me to spend money with your company.  In fact I am far less likely to do business with someone who is trying to shove it down my throat (unless it’s ice cream – I might make an exception there).

Social networking is about building relationships with people, it’s about creating an awareness of your brand amongst your network in the hope that they will spread the word, it’s about knowledge sharing and helping eachother to succeed in business.  You don’t need to blatantly sell to people. You will gain far more by taking the approach you would with an offline networking group because if you help people out by putting them in touch with someone useful or giving them some free advice then you can bet when they need your services in the future, you will be the first person they think of.

That’s it, rant over.  I’m off to Facebook

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.

This has been one of those weeks where it seems that spam is taking over my life. It’s in my email inbox, on my Twitter account and on our Facebook page, not to mention on our blog and on those of our clients.

I seem to spend an unreasonable portion of my day deleting spam mail and moderating spam comments and I am truly sick of it.

I’m assuming that the spammers do get some results, otherwise they wouldn’t bother, but the majority of people hate spam just as much as I do. It’s important therefore to avoid coming across “spammy” in any of your business’s online marketing efforts in order not to alienate potential customers.

So what are some of the things that ordinary businesses do that are or can verge on being spammy?

• Sending out too many emails to subscribers – they want to be updated, not inundated
• Only including self promotional material in online content, nothing of value
• Making inane comments on blogs or social media portals purely for links, etc instead of having actual conversations
• Paying dodgy companies to get you more friends/Likes on Facebook or followers on Twitter instead of creating content that is actually worth liking or following
• Promoting your own business on other people’s walls or blogs

Basically if you spend the majority of your time talking at people instead of conversing with them on social media, you’re probably guilty. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and think how you would feel getting that message – would you be grateful or irritated? Be honest!

The internet is a fantastic place so let’s not ruin it by polluting it with yet more spam. There are more than enough true spammers out there already, without the rest of us getting involved.

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.

There has been a lot of press regarding privacy and confidentiality concerns recently. I’m not going to delve into the rights and wrongs of Facebook’s, Google’s and Twitter’s privacy policies, but thought it would be a good idea to go over what is and isn’t a good idea regarding privacy and confidentiality when marketing your business online.

Good practices

• Make sure your business has standard privacy and confidentiality guidelines and that all employees are aware of them.
• What you publish online is accessible to almost anyone and will be there for a long time, so be intelligent about protecting your privacy as well as your business’s proprietary and confidential information.
• Ensure that you and your employees respect brand, trademark, copyright, fair use, trade secrets, confidentiality and disclosure laws.
• Get employees to us a disclaimer when posting on other sites that is something along the lines of “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent Your Business’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Practices to avoid

• Publishing, reporting on or even just mentioning conversations that are intended to be private or kept within your business.
• Sharing client specific information without their permission, e.g. case studies, testimonials or quotes.
• Writing disparaging remarks about other people or businesses.
• Posting anything that makes you feel at all uncomfortable. If you’re not 100% sure it’s appropriate, take some time to think it over or discuss it with someone if necessary.

Sticking to these simple guidelines, especially when making use of social media, could help keep you out of trouble.