Getting Started on Social Media
If you’re new to social media, check out these tips to get your social media presence – whether personal or organizational – started.
Take social media seriously. This seems like a silly first step, but it’s the best thing you can do to start taking advantage of social media. Shift your mindset and start seeing social media as a powerful tool that can help you meet your bottom line. If you need more of a reason to take social media seriously, check out the social media ROI page.
Play personally before entering the arena representing your organization. The best way to understand how social media works and why it’s such a powerful tool is to get online and start playing. And when I say play, I mean it! Have fun with social media by connecting to your family and friends and you’ll start to see how this online tool can help enhance your offline relationships, both personally and professionally.
Get your privacy settings sorted out. Facebook and LinkedIn are the two platforms where privacy matters most, so visit the websites listed below to make sure you’re protecting your information online. And of course, always use common sense. For example, don’t list your birthday, or social security number on any social media platforms.
- Facebook has a great privacy help page that walks you through your privacy settings as well as their Data Use Policy and Terms. It’s very important to be familiar with the privacy settings that are available and the Terms, so be sure to give yourself plenty of time to go through this webpage.
- LinkedIn has a page in their Learning Center that walks you through the privacy settings on LinkedIn so that you can feel comfortable about the safety of your personal information.
Set up a Google Alert. One of the biggest challenges in managing a social media presence is finding appropriate content to post. A Google Alert allows you to enter a search term and once a day Google will send you an email with all the news items and new web results that match that search term. So if you have a business in sustainable construction, set up a “sustainable construction” and “green construction” Google Alert and you’ll have great content delivered to your inbox once a day.
Use a social media management application such as HootSuite, TweetDeck or Buffer. These platforms allow you to manage your presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in one application. The greatest thing about these applications is that they let you schedule posts. This means that instead of having to make all of your posts in real time, you can sit down, write them, and schedule them out in one sitting. Note that when using Facebook it’s recommend that you schedule your posts within Facebook itself. Here’s a great article about scheduling posts on Facebook. These applications also have powerful analytics tools so you can track your success.
Know where to go to get help. Of course you can always give Brittany a call, but here’s a list of some of Brittany’s favorite websites that have great resources to help you troubleshoot any social media problem you can think of: