Assignment for you

 1) Have a Strategy

The single most important part of social media management happens long before you ever sign up for Facebook or publish your first Tweet. Each social media marketing campaign should start with clearly outlined goals and a battle plan that will help you achieve those goals.

Here’s the secret of a good strategy: for a strategy to be effective, it must be as specific as possible.

For example, SEJ’s Social Media Strategy breaks down tactics for dealing with seven of the most popular platforms, and each one is specific in its aims (e.g. increasing Facebook followers by 10% each month, increasing Twitter followers by 5% each month, etc). They refine their strategies further by listing tone/style guidelines, posting strategies, engagement strategies, and strategies to find new followers.

Typical start-up social media management strategies will look a little different. These strategies revolve around assessing your strengths and weaknesses as a company and finding opportunities to turn your early customers into brand evangelists.

2) Choose the Best Platforms

How’s your Facebook outreach going? What about Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+? Do you have a YouTube account? What about Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr? And lest we forget, Reddit.

With so many social media platforms to choose from, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed if you don’t stay organized. The worst part is that you overlooking one platform might mean missing out on a huge potential market.

According to Christina Baldassarre’s research, the best platforms for engagement currently are Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Linked In, Pinterest, Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube—but you should also consider other platforms where your audience may live.

3) Use the Right Tools

Keeping up with social media is an impossible task for us mere mortals. Fortunately, there are some handy software options to help you manage and monitor all of your social media accounts from one central hub. Here are some of the best options:

• BuzzBundle: (disclaimer: my software) We developed BuzzBundle to be the ultimate social media management tool. Not only does it connect with all the biggest social media platforms, but it helps you monitor blogs, forums, and Q&A sites, too. Best of all, BuzzBundle analytics gives you the insights you need to reach new customers, boost your SEO campaign, and find key influencers in your industry.
• Hootsuite: Hootsuite connects you to over 35 social networks. Like BuzzBundle, Hootsuite lets you find out what your customers are saying about your brand and easily manage your outreach thanks to a central hub for all of your social media management.
• Buffer: Social media is Buffer’s specialty. Buffer lets you post photos, videos, and posts to the most popular social media sites. It also lets you craft posts in advance and publishes them later for maximum exposure.
• Sprout Social: Sprout Social’s platform lets you manage your social messages through a single-stream inbox. You can schedule, publish, and post content to your favorite social media sites and then get valuable insights on how audiences engage with your content.
• Social Studio: Salesforce’s offering helps you engage with your customers by keeping you connected to over 650 million different sources. With this software, you can listen in on conversations surrounding your brand, engage with your audience, and post to all the important platforms.