A lot of my clients say that they want to do social media for themselves or their business but don’t know how they can do it with their busy schedule! Other clients say that social media is not a effective way to find leads.
The following are the tools that I’ve found and use to allow me to post to my social media feeds and interact with potential clients while keeping my day job. Once you get in the rhythm of things you can do this effectively in just 30 minutes a day.
1) Morning Reading
Spend the first 20 minutes of your day learning the latest news for your industry.
Reading the daily newspaper or listening to the news on the drive into work is not going to give you the information you need to stay on top of your industry. Having data aggregators make it easy for you to stay upto date on everything in your industry. If you don’t know where to get your data start with sites like Alltop or Smartbrief. If you already know where to get the data for your industry i suggest using the RSS app Feedly, its the best. Google Reader is also a good one to go with.
2) Schedule Great Content
As your reading these articles in the morning or whenever you come across some great content you want to share with your followers. You don’t want to have to go to Twitter or Facebook to most it. Also if you find 3 great articles in the morning you don’t want to bombard your followers with everything at once, instead schedule them out throughout the day.
To solve this problem I use Buffer App which allows you to set a schedule of upto 10 posts that will be tweeted and posted to your Facebook at the times that you decide. Besides being Free this app allows you to simply right click on any page to tweet it then or put it in your buffer to be posted at your next scheduled time.
3) Engage With Potential Clients
Every business can use more leads and users on social networks are often asking for help. During my lunch break I use Inbox Q to find those who have questions that need answers. I set up my Inbox Q to look for tweets that are “seo -rt -http ?” which means a tweet that are a question that contains the phrase “seo”, but is not a RT and doesn’t have a link in it.
The Inbox Q icon stays in your browser head and pops up a number when someone tweets a possible questions that you can answer. Since we’re using twitter they usually have simple questions and i can give them a short answer. Doing this helps me find possible clients, network with new people, and gain recognition as a helpful industry leader.
4) Respond To Fans
Again you don’t have time to be constantly logging into Twitter and Facebook for updates. That’s why I suggest getting a social media dashboard like Hootsuite or TweetDeck. With these dashboards you can easily monitor your social media accounts to see if you get any comments, mentions, or direct messages to respond to.
I check them in the morning after I get done with my morning reading and then again at lunch
What Helps You Do Social Media?
These are some of the tips, apps, and tricks that I use to help me do social media without losing my day job as an SEO. Would like to hear what you do to make Social Media work for you?