Social Media can be a huge lead generator for businesses when used to its full potential. After attending a networking event back in December and receiving a lot of interest from various other business owners regarding Social Media, I sat down and started putting ideas together for a Workshop around how manage your Social Media platforms yourself and get the most of them without spending huge amounts of time on it.
Back in August I completed the Hootsuite Social Marketing Certification that gave great insights and knowledge on how to better manage my social media. I realized there are heaps of Small Business Owners out there that either don’t have the money to hire someone to manage their social media or they find it too time consuming doing it themselves because they are unsure of how to tackle it and where to start. As with anything you can automate your system however it will require some engagement & atleast 2 hours a week on your part.
To give you an example I started making a task list and really focusing on what needed to be done. It may not seem like much but in 4 months I’ve managed to grow and maintain my Twitter following by almost 50 and increased my Facebook likes by 20.
In the basic Workshop I will go over a few areas including;
Key points regarding Facebook, Google+ and Twitter
How to create an account & set up Hootsuite
How to manage & post from Hootsuite
Using a Content Calendar
Finding Content & Ideas
Tips on Posting
Best times & days to post
Tracking Your Analytics
This workshop will be hands on so you will need to bring your own laptop and the class will be limited to 8 people.
Canva is a free cloud based program that will help you transform those drab looking quotes into something special. It’s handy and helpful for people who want to showcase their handmade designs to the everyday business owner. There are so many different things that you can create with Canva. I’ve been using it for over a year now and never looked back. You have access to over 8000 predesigned templates both free and paid, access to millions of photo’s there are some free ones but you can purchase some photos without breaking the bank or upload your own if you can’t find what you’re after.
What can you do with Canva?
If you’re just starting out or don’t have a lot of money to spend on a Graphic Designer then this would be the way to go. It’s Do It Yourself Marketing! Below is a quick overview of what you can create with Canva so you can determine if it’s right for you.
Social Media Designs (e.g. quotes, specials)
Posters
Blog Graphics
Cards
Email Headers
Twitter Posts
Pinterest Graphics
Instagram Posts
Headers for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, Etsy, Email
Logo’s
Flyers
Resume`s
Invitations
Facebook Ad’s
Infographics
Here are some of the Features in the Free Canva Version
If you are after something basic that will give you the ability to dress up your images then this version will work well for you.
You are given 2 folders to help you organize your designs.
Create a team for ‘free’ and invite up to 10 members so you can collaborate on your designs.
1GB of storage. So you can upload a large amount of photos.
Canva for Work
For $12.95 per month you will get these added features to use.
Unlimited folders for your designs
Up to 50 team members can be invited
Unlimited storage
Upload custom fonts for you brand
Set colour palettes for your brand
Create & Save templates for you team
Organize your photos into folders
Search function available for you to quickly find your designs
Priority Support
Canva is also available at the App Store so you can now create graphics on your Ipad or Iphone. I hope this blog post has given you a bit of insight into Canva and how you can use it within your business.
In this article I’m going to touch on how to stay engaged on Facebook with people you have previously met or business pages that you follow.
Sometimes it can get confusing and frustrating when you need to find a service and you know you liked their page but it’s lost in a sea of over 300 likes on your personal profile. Or you’ve met someone at a networking event and liked their page but you’re not engaging in their content because by the time that they’ve published a post it’s disappeared in your personal news feed.
There is an easy way!
Go to your Business Facebook page
On the right hand side click on
At the top click on
Then type the business name that you want to like, this will then like their page as your business name rather than your personal profile.
You will then see on the left hand side a section which will show all the businesses you’ve liked as your page, this makes it easier to find selected businesses rather than having it among randomly liked pages under your personal profile. The best part is you can view only the page feed of these businesses rather than having it display amongst your friends and family posts as well .
Having these pages separate and in an easy to view format will allow you to engage with these pages more e.g. more likes, shares and comments therefore hopefully gaining some new followers yourself. When liking, commenting or sharing these posts from within your business news feed you have the option to not only use your business profile but also your personal profile so you aren’t restricted to just one or the other.
I hope you’ve learnt something new and this helps you to manage the pages you like in Facebook.
Are you one of those people that cringe when the word ‘Social Media’ is mentioned? You know that you need to use Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms to boost the exposure for your business but you find it’s a chore especially finding articles and organizing your content. So how do you manage & source your content?
Recently I completed the Hootsuite Social Marketing Certification it was a great online course especially giving me the insight and overview of what to do and what not to do. I was using the Free version of Hootsuite which allows you to add 3 social media accounts but have since upgraded to the Pro version allowing me up to 15 accounts and it also gives you added insights & reports giving you an indication of what content your clients/customers like to see so you can try to target those areas.
I’ve tried many content calendars one’s that had been created in excel and downloadable versions but nothing seemed to work for me until I decided to just use another google calendar.
This is the view you can expect to see in Hootsuite however there’s no way to establish which platform you posted to unless you click on the ‘blue’ posts to expand and this can sometimes be a bit confusing. Don’t get me wrong it’s a fantastic site but I needed something else to help me manage my posts.
So in conjunction with Hootsuite I’ve set up my content in another google calendar giving me an overview weekly, monthly and daily of my posts. Below is an example of my calendar for the week. As you can see I’ve colour coded each platform within the calendar also any groups that you want to post to on a weekly basis just add as a task or even a recurring task too. I find that it’s a better way of viewing what was posted and what is scheduled, whereas with Hootsuite once your post has been published it then goes to the Past Scheduled tab not giving you a proper overview. The beauty of both the Google calendar and Hootsuite is that if you need to change a time or date when you want something posted you can just drag and drop making things really easy.
Sourcing Content
Using Twitter can be great to source content. Just follow people that you find interesting or that you think will interest your customers and you can find great articles to share. With Twitter every couple of minutes there is a new post so the content is always fresh.
Just as you follow people on Twitter Like pages on Facebook where you think you can share articles to your customers. Use Facebooks ‘Saved’ pages feature when you come across an interesting article so you can add it to Hootsuite later on and schedule without having to search your timeline all over again.
Utilize Google Alerts. Create alerts in Google so when certain keywords are triggered you will receive an email to let you know that a new article has been published with those keywords.
Create a folder on your bookmarks bar so when you come across an article, video or link you can just save this to the folder so you can review later.
Use the Hootsuite Suggestions feature in the Pro version. This is a handy feature based on the keywords that you put in the ‘Suggested Topics’ box it will give you articles sourced from the internet allowing you to publish straight into your Hootsuite Calendar. (see below)
Make sure to download the extension for Hootsuite so when you are just browsing the internet and want to post or schedule something quickly you can just click on the owl in the top right and you will get a dialog box open so you can do just that.
I hoped this has helped and given you some tips and insight on how to manage and source your content stress free.
