I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last blog post. I’ve been very busy, and if you’re running your own business, you’ve probably been busy too.
When we’re super-busy with customers, our attention to other things can tend to drop off. Think about what a revolution Clorox wipes were to cleaning a bathroom or your kitchen. Don’t have time for the full scrub? A quick wipe-down will do. What you need is a way to clean up your social media channels just as quickly.
5 Steps to a Quick Social Media Refresh
1. Create a new bio blurb.
Every social media channel has a bio or “about” section. If you’re still using the same one as when you first signed on, it’s way past time for a change. Create one new bio and expand, shorten or tweak to fit each channel. Make sure you link to your website or appropriate landing page and not some outdated promotional page.
2. Update photos.
Whether it’s your own profile or your company’s page, you need to keep photos fresh. For your brand, choose something seasonal. Don’t use stock photography for your cover photos, and make sure that any photos of employees or yourself are up to date. Also, make sure that your photos are the optimal size for the channel you’re placing it on. SproutSocial has an Always Up-to-Date Guide to Social Media Image Sizes to make this easier for you.
3. Clean up “Followers” and “Following.”
Trying to manage social media all on your own? It’s easy to forget to keep up with who’s following you and who you’re following. Unfortunately, fake and inactive users might make up many of your users. For Twitter, you can use tools like Tweepi, Friend or Follow, TwitBlock and more. For Google+, if you have Chrome, you can use their Uncircle+ extension, but if not, you’ll have to clean up your circles manually.
4. Start a conversation.
If you’ve been dormant for a while, look at what people have been talking about lately. Add to the conversation in a meaningful way. A quick look at my Twitter stream this morning turned up many mentions of customer service and customer-focused content. An easy conversation starter–what’s the best customer service you’ve ever received? If you ask for the worst, be prepared for someone to mention an unhappy encounter with your business.
You can also take what people are saying and create your own blog post or post a relevant photo or graphic and try and actively encourage people to engage. Offer incentive to do so, maybe a quick giveaway to get customers interested again.
5. Go back to your editorial calendar.
An editorial calendar–when used–is a wonderful tool that can help you in those time-crunched moments. Don’t have time to create an original blog post from scratch? Take one of your old ones and update it. Turn a relatively recent (or at least still relevant) SlideShare or other presentation into a blog post. Reshare old content that doesn’t sound old–you can always ask people, “What would you add to this list?”
The key to managing your social media accounts is to use editorial calendars and other tools that will help you manage your time. Mark time in your calendar for regular social media cleanup–one cleanup task a day or every other day will help you avoid having to do a major cleanup later when you just don’t have the time.
If you’re really having trouble keeping up and quality of your postings and interaction is suffering, it’s time to re-evaluate what channels you should be on. Hmm…maybe that will be my next topic here. Stay tuned!
