5 Ways to Make Social Media More Manageable
Social media can be overwhelming due to the innumerable channels available, the seemingly endless flow of information, and the pressure to be available all the time. As a coach and business owner, you don’t have time to waste getting bogged down in the overwhelm, so here are five ways that you can make social media more manageable.
1) Understand Your Audience and Stay Where They Are
Chances are your audience is not on every social media channel, so you don’t have to be either. Find out where they are and meet them there. To make social media even more manageable, start with just one platform. Once you’ve gotten into a routine and are posting on a regular basis, you can begin building your presence on another one.
2) Create Google Alerts for Curated Content
Social media is about connecting with people and drawing them in by their interests—not about shameless self-promotion. You should only use about 20 percent of your social media content to promote your brand; the other 80 percent should be made up of curated content. Finding the right content to share with your audience can be rather time consuming. To cut down on the time, consider setting up different alerts through channels such as Google Alerts or RSS feeds.
Alerts for what? Consider your coaching niche. If you coach people in organizations, set up alerts for “coaching in organizations” or “coaching cultures.” Also, consider what your audience is interested in. If you coach millennial leaders, you could share content that focuses on tips for first-time leaders, insights that might be useful for high potentials, or trends related to that age group in the workforce.
If you’re on Twitter, Twitter Lists are also a great way to find and collect curated content. Add thought leaders and other related accounts to a list, and then visit it any time you are looking for curated content on that specific topic.
3) Strategically Follow Others
Another good source of content is the people you follow, so get strategic. As a starting place, consider following ICF and/or your local ICF Chapter for general content that shows the value of coaching. If you coach entrepreneurs, Entrepreneur and Inc may be of interest. A couple other rich resources for content are Harvard Business Review and Success. (Hint: If you’re on Twitter, you can also add these accounts to a Twitter List.)
4) Use a Scheduling Tool
So, you’ve found all this great content to share, but what do you do with it? You don’t want to bombard your followers with 10 articles in the span of five minutes. Instead, space your content over time. A scheduling tool can make this easier, and it can help ensure that you are posting on consistent basis. You may find it helpful to block off a small chunk of time each week to find and create content. Then, you can upload a week’s worth of messages into the scheduler all at once. Buffer and Hootsuite are two of the most popular scheduling tools, and they offer free versions.
5) Check Social Media Once a Day
Plan to check social media notifications once a day, or periodically throughout the day, but don’t feel pressured to be attached 24/7. It can be overwhelming and could lead to burn out.
If you’re worried about social media followers getting discouraged that you are not available every hour of the day, add a line to your profile bio or about section that says, “It may take up to 24 hours to receive a reply.” And, if you have a Company Page on Facebook, you can go even further and set away messages.