Socially Savvy: Three valuable social media organizational tips

Regardless of whether or not you are a social media professional – you are busy! This field can be misleading as the platforms we use are free, and used by almost everyone we know. It is important to remember that your time (and my time) is not free. You have a lot to say but you also have lots to do.

Social media professionals want to share their knowledge, thoughts, best practices and tools but sometimes we get so busy doing them for others that we don’t have time to blog, post, pin, tweet for ourselves. So, how do you change that? How do you get organized? Check out these social media organizational tips to help with your day-to-day planning and posting:

1. Use timers in the work place
I don’t care if you use your iPhone, your Outlook calendar or the second hand on your wrist watch – make the most of your time by giving yourself limits.

Want to blog? Great – you’ve got the next 30 minutes to focus solely on your blog. Want to pin for your brand? Wonderful – limit yourself to the next 20 minutes to cruise Pinterest for great, shareable idea.

Social media is social and therefore can be distracting. Limit distractions by sticking to a timer and remember you can always go back or continue if you are on a roll.

2. Editorial Calendars
My friends, if you are not using calendars to plan and implement your social media strategy – HAULT! Calendars are your friend and are not just for organizing social, after work activities. I encourage clients to print out an actual paper calendar and use it as a blueprint for all social media content. Use pencil, nothing is set in stone.

Want to do three Facebook and Twitter posts a week with one blog and multiple questions and answers? Great idea – map it out on a calendar. Like the idea of a Monday question or a Thursday trivia bit? Get it on your calendar. What events, deadline, photos, videos, etc. do you want to share? Get them on a calendar before you do anything.

Good social media content doesn’t just come on a whim – it’s planned.

3. Content Management tools
If you don’t do anything else after reading this blog except sign up for a content management tool, I will be happy. Here you are setting timers, using a calendar to schedule your content but you aren’t using a link shortener to track your clicks? Preposterous!

Seriously though, using a content management tool like Bitly, TweetDesk or HootSuite (check out my colleague Emily Owens’  HootSuite blog here) to track all links your put out into the world helps you see what content your audience is reading, track the most clicked on posts (big ROI potential here), schedule posts for when you are not in front of your computer, easily displays Mentions, Home Feed, Sent Tweets and Direct messages on one screen and allows you to manager multiple social media avatars at once.

December starts on Saturday – why not make a new month resolution and try these social media organizational tips today?

Molly puts the "social" into her role as ShowPony’s social media manager. She is likely to be found buzzing around on coffee dates or speed walking around Green Lake. Molly loves perfectly executed tweets, color-coded calendars and cat videos. Email Molly if you want to grow your audience, expand your reach, or recap the latest episode of Mad Men.