Some people can handle multitasking better than others. I tend to take it to the extreme — doing so many things at once that I get so unfocused, feeling like a headless chicken running around. Many of us interacting online manage multiple profiles, blogs and contacts to the point of information overload.
Personally, I don’t think twice about managing everything at once, but sometimes things can slip through the cracks — that’s where things go wrong.
If you’re a social media marketer, there are certain things you cannot let slide when it comes to almost every one of your campaigns — here are five straightforward things to add to your to-do list:
Listen
It may seem obvious, I know, but seriously! Listen. Listen before you bombard people with more stuff. You’ll learn a lot — trends, the shape of your community.
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Read your mentions, comments and keep the pulse on your community. Creating a Google Alert is a simple, free solution for tracking online interactions.
When it comes time to open your mouth, don’t spam your community. For one, it’s illegal. Two, it degrades your brand — your repuation. That’s one of the most important things you have, so don’t lose it.
Connect Your Profiles
What good is having every social networking profile under the sun for your brand, if they’re all disconnected? It’d be like building a central city with roads only connecting it to the suburbs and back, without any way to get from suburb to suburb.
Building a community online works way better when everything is connected — your consumers don’t have to go off searching, they can simply find a mention in the profile they’re looking at.
The key is to remove all obstacles in order to join the community and consumers will connect the brand every way they can.
Take Advantage of Multimedia
YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, DailyBooth — the list goes on. Multimedia enhances your text and keeps your consumers engaged in rich, new ways.
Get creative! Maybe take one picture a day on DailyBooth to keep your community in the loop — it’s a personal touch they’ll appreciate. If you’re not up to that, simply adding pictures or video (or both!) to your feeds and blogs will keep people interested.
Tracking Mechanisms
Sometimes it can be tough to track the success of a social media campaign, but there are a few tools you can use to measure effectiveness of certain strategies or platforms you’re using.
It might seem like an obvious one, but Google Analytics is really a must-have for every site. It’s free, powerful, flexible and easy-to-use.
Another great tool is Crazy Egg. It’s not free, but with packages ranging from $9 to $99 per month — depending on your needs — you can track not only referrals and visits across multiple pages, you can take advantage of the “heat tracking” feature.
With “heat tracking” you can see what part of your page gets the most mouse traffic, and from there, you can make changes that matter.
Set Goals
It’s easy to go full steam ahead when you’re passionate about something, but make sure you set goals. What do you want to achieve?
Make sure you have clear policies drawn out so your team can stay consistent and plan for what’s next.
Something else that’s very important is having a crisis management plan. Countless things could go wrong, and people will talk if they do. Stay honest and have a plan to get through it. It’s easy to simply pretend nothing happened, but that’s the worst thing you could do.
These five things are simple, but can be easy to forget when things become overwhelming. Most of all though, make sure you don’t forget to have fun. People feed off of energy, so give off a fun and positive attitude — it’s contagious!
What’s always on your to-do list?
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