Do you manage your companies’ social media? Are you finding it hard to find the time to update Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn?  Did you know that the average office worker is interrupted by co-workers, emails or phone calls every 11 minutes and it takes the same time to re-focus? Does this happen to you? 

Millions of people each day use social media to interact with companies, friends and family and by interacting with them you are influencing where they spend their time and money.  Here are some tips to try easy the pain:  

-          Use applications like Tweet Deck and Hootsuite to schedule your posts.  Take an hour a week and schedule the most important posts. You will always know special offers and event details ahead of time, so ensure that you have them scheduled well in advance.

-          Want to cut out the interruptions?  Why not start work 1 hour early, one day a week.  I can already hear you all screaming at the computers as you read this, saying things like, it’s easier said than done, I cannot get up any earlier etc etc,   but I tell you it really helps.  You will get so much more done when there are no interruptions and it may take less time than you thought so maybe you only need to get up 30mins early next week.

-          Make it count – find the right time of day. Analyse when your connections / followers are online.  If they are online at 5pm then ensure that your posts go out at 5pm.  If they go out earlier they will get lost in amongst all the other posts from companies, friends and family.  If you are timing it better and getting better interaction and results you may find that you don’t need to update your pages quite so often.

-          Focus on the social media sites that your existing or potential clients use.  All too often I meet people who are active on all the major social media websites, just because. Why not find out which ones your clients are most active on and focus on these.  Better to use 2 well than 6 badly.

-          Remember to sync your accounts together; this means that your Facebook posts can feed into Twitter. Twitter into LinkedIn etc.  This will reduce the amount of work needed, but be careful to ensure that this works with your strategy. If you are targeting different sectors on different social media sites this will not work as the information needs may be different.

Happy posting

I spent an hour with a building contractor last week; they wanted help getting business from their website.  I always ask the same 2 opening questions when I meet a new client:

1. Who is your target market?
2. What is your USP, what sets you apart from all your competitors?

I found this client particularly interesting- his answers were:

Q: Who is your target market?

A: Provide the service nationally but would like to do more work locally.  Can get work in the wilds of Cork or Donegal but not on his own door step.

Q: What is your USP, what sets you apart from all your competitors? 

A: Don’t know. Nothing.  

Now that I had this information I took a look at his site, it looked nice and was quite user friendly but he was reinvesting in a new site with some great interactive elements that ensured the user understood the key elements of what he provided but still no sign of a USP.  So I dug and I dug deep.  And finally after about 30mins of discussions I realised that yes he did build houses, yes they were energy efficient houses just like all his competitors but he also used particular timber frames and materials that immediately gave a home owner a higher rating in a BER cert before they even called a BER assessor out. Bingo.

The moral of this story is that you need a USP (unique selling point); you need to know what sets you aside from your competitors and you need to shout it from the roof tops so potential clients know what it is.

-          Write about the benefits not just the features of what you do/sell.

-          If you provide accommodation what do you do that is different to the hotel down the road?

-          Sell products or services? What is different about your product or service?  – Why would I buy from you over your competitors? And it does not mean that you have to be cheaper, what additional value do you bring?

-          Create key features on your website that showcase your USP – don’t rely on your website visitors digging as deep as I did.  They won’t and as a result you will loose them to your competitor

-          Make sure your USP is timely, attracts people now e.g. got Christmas offerings or USP that would attract the Christmas market, is it on your website now and has it been there for the last few weeks, if not why not?

You MUST stand out from the crowd to succeed online.