Social media can be feel like an overwhelmingly massive undertaking when first starting out, especially for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and individuals.  There’s a lot of pressure to be relevant and active in a lots of places at the same time, and that’s just the beginning.  Once you begin to build a following, you’ve got to be able to remain engaged with those followers who send messages and comment with questions.

The good news is, with proper planning and strategy implementation you can set yourself up to succeed from the start, rather than setting yourself up to fail.

CONSISTENCY.

If you have been hiding under a rock, and haven’t noticed how vital consistency is when it comes to social media, take note now!  Quality, content, design, voice, and distribution frequency all represent your brand and require consistency on social media.  A brand who’s social media is inconsistent screams lack of professionalism and know-how.

So how can you stay consistent?  Plan ahead.  Make sure you have quality design and content.  Take some time to brainstorm and create posts.  Use automation tools (naturally, not in a spammy way).  If your brand has a classic look & feel, make sure your social media does too.  If your brand is loud & proud, make sure your social media is too.

POST AT OPTIMAL TIMES.

Different platforms have different peak post times across the board.  For example, Instagram’s peak time is Wednesdays at 5pm, whereas Facebook’s most recent data shows that it’s peak times are Thursdays and Fridays between 1 and 3pm.  These are great starting points, but once you begin to build a following, your social analytics will tell you what times are the best times to post for your brand, based upon the engagement of your followers.  Make sure you’re utilizing the peak times to reach the most people.  The more people you’re reaching, the more likely they are to like, share, pin, re-tweet, repost, etc.  Those actions are how you grow organically.

USE A SCHEDULING TOOL.

Automation is one of the biggest time-savers when it comes to an effective social media presence.  It would be impossible to maintain a level of consistency in posts without a tool that helps you automate posting.  Some of these tools include Buffer, SocialPilot, HootSuite, SproutSocial, PostCron and the list goes on,  Do some research and figure out which tool is the best fit for you.  Some of them support different platforms, some allow for team use, some even help you optimize the best time to post.  The bottom line is, if you don’t schedule posts, you won’t be able to achieve consistency.  Life happens, business happens, clients call, meetings come up.  You have to run your business, do your job, and tackle issues as the arise.  Trying to manually manage a post schedule would be an unnecessary headache.  Instead, take some time each week, or each month to plan ahead and schedule your posts.  You’ll be glad you did!

DON’T GET STUCK!

As always, if you find yourself getting stuck on anything, or find that social media is too much to handle effectively, reach out to us here at Raine Digital.  We love working with social media and love helping businesses and entrepreneurs succeed even more!