5 Tips to Effectively Manage Your Social Accounts

In the world of social media, there is no “one size fits all” strategy that will work for any business, but following some basic principles can certainly help you grow your social footprint while building authority and supporting your SEO efforts.

Here are 5 tips that should help you keep your SMO (social media optimisation) on track.

1. Choose the right channels

There is a very wide range of social websites you can use for your business, so rather than trying to use them all, it is best to choose the most relevant ones for your business. B2B businesses would usually focus more on LinkedIn, while ecommerce websites can give more importance to Facebook. Find out where your target audience is the most active to get started.

2. Be responsive and proactive

Thanks to modern technologies and particularly smartphones, your customers are pretty much always connected. So no matter which social channel you use, make sure you are available to answer questions at least during business hours. This applies even more so to Twitter, which people tend to use as an extra support channel when facing problems with a product or service. It is also always good to monitor conversations around your brand across the web – setting up Google alerts is a great way to be aware of any mentions and enable you to react quickly.

3. Use social management tools

The more social accounts you have, the harder it becomes to manage them. Using social media management tools can help you save time by managing all your social accounts using one platform. Hootsuite for example offers a free package that enables you to manage up to 3 social profiles using the online interface. No more logging into 3 different sites to post updates, and you also get the ability to schedule posts to keep your accounts active across the day.

4. Provide content variety

In order to grow your social communities, you need to provide your audience with relevant content. Offering a wide variety of content will ensure that readers keep returning for more and should also increase engagement. Finding what works best for your readers will require some testing, but our advice would be to mix industry news, tips and advice, competitions, company announcements, PR, seasonal message, videos, images. If you have a blog on your site, then your social accounts are the perfect place to share new posts and drive traffic.

5. Monitor performance

A very often neglected part of social media optimisation is the monitoring of performance. After all if you’re going to invest business resources into social media, you want to make sure you get the best return on investment. Measuring KPIs (key performance indicators) such as total followers, engagement (shares, retweets, +1s…) and social traffic to your website should enable you to identify trends and refine your social media strategy as you go along.

Following these 5 simple tips should help you get more out of your social activities, but the Mahon Digital team is always available if you need help with your social strategy or ongoing management – Get in touch 

About the author

Etienne is the Head of SEO here at Mahon Digital and he’s been involved in the digital & search marketing industry for over 12 years now, working for small family owned businesses as well as international FTSE 500 companies. He’s passionate about all things digital, but more specifically about digital & search strategy and marketing analysis.