Keeping your small business social media marketing efforts organized and effective

Based off of your industry and customer base, you need to figure out which social media platforms your business should have a presence on. No, you don’t need to be on every platform – especially when you’re first building your business. Start by putting yourself into your ideal customers’ shoes, and thinking about where they hang out online. Once you have picked which platforms you’ll be using to market your business, it’s time to get your efforts organized.

Hootsuite is the tool that I use to keep my social media marketing organized. From the Hootsuite dashboard I can see the activity from all of my social profiles, helping me to get an overall picture of my different networks. Use Hootsuite tabs in the same way that you’d use computer folders and keep your streams sorted by platform.

Once you have developed your social media marketing strategy, you can use Hootsuite (or another scheduling tool) to compose and schedule your updates. This will allow you to set out a certain time in the day to organize all of your social posts, and they can be published throughout the day making it seem like your business is active all day long. Social media never sleeps, but you do, so take advantage of the scheduling tools available. Make sure you set aside time to return to your social profiles and respond to any interactions that have happened on your scheduled posts. Your customers don’t want to watch you having a one-sided conversation.

Once you’ve been posting, engaging and responding for a while, it’s time to look at your data and find out what’s working, and what’s not. Using Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics you can find out the best times to post, which content is most engaging to your audience, and you can watch your growth over time. Use this data to keep your marketing efforts efficient and avoid wasting time on a strategy that isn’t working.

Finally, one of the most important parts of your social strategy will be to listen to what people are saying about your brand. Using the Hootsuite dashboard, Insights and Analytics, you’ll be able to hear what your customers are talking about. By monitoring the online conversations that happen around your brand, you have the golden opportunity to put out fires before they burn your budding business. Take a little bit of time every day to engage in social listening. You’ll often find the information your customers are giving you through social media is as good as money in the bank.