Social Media Management

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Are you managing your Social Media or is your Social Media managing you? I must admit my Social Media program is managing me. Social Media offers so many opportunities however, often keeping up with current commitments requires all allocated Social Media time, making it difficult, if not impossible to develop additional Social Media opportunities. Social Media goes beyond Social Networking sites and Blogging, offering business additional opportunities such as:

• Video Sharing
• Internet Radio and Television
• Podcasts
• Social Bookmarking

That is by no means a comprehensive list (42 Web Site Marketing Strategies) but does provide an indication of the potential Social Media offerings. Since I am currently managed by Social Media these opportunities are firmly entrenched in the To Do List. To integrate additional Social Media tools into the Social Media Marketing program will require either allocating additional time to the Social Media Program, Outsourcing some Social Media tasks, and cutting back on some current Social Media activities. To provide the required Social Media interaction for activities such as Video Sharing and Internet Radeo requires an extensive amount of additional time which may not be available so prioritization will likely be required. Prioritization of Social Media Tools is a decision which is unique to each business, dependent on human resources, budgeting constraints and business requirements.

Review Social Media Activities

Reviewing current Social Media activities identifies the methods currently providing business benefits and those which are not and offer potential for re-allocation of resources to an additional Social Media strategy. Assuming the business's primary Social Media activities are Social Networking and Blogging the following allows you to gain some insight into your Social Media performance.

• Review your web site analytic software to determine how your web site visitors are finding your web site.
• Review you Social Network participation including such things as discussion comments and the frequency of networking requests.
• Evaluate your Blogs performance with Technorati and Google Blog Search results.
• Determine Social Bookmarking and Social Recommendations frequency.
• Review Micro-Blogging followers, retweets and search results.

Although this is not a comprehensive Social Media review it does provide an indication of some Social Media performance indicators and will assist you in deciding how best to use current resources and move forward with additional opportunities.

Time: A Commodity

Social Media is time consuming and therefore time management is essential. Following the preliminary Social Media review, determining how best to use available resources is a prerequisite to the maintenance of the current Social Media Program and the implementation of additional strategies and tools. A couple of steps to get things headed in the right direction include:

• Develop an integrated Social Media Plan
• Prepare a schedule for the implementation of additional Social Media strategies.
• Develop human resource plan for current and future additional programs.
• Monitor time spent on Social Media to ensure the program does not use more than the allocated time and human resources.

Out Sourcing

Out sourcing some Social Media tasks offers an additional solution when time and human resources are limited. However, care must be taken when deciding to out source Social Media. Social Media is personal and although some tasks can be successfully out sourced it is recommended that personal communications such as Discussions, Tweets and Blogging be completed by the individual associated with the Social Media account.

The Last Word

With so many opportunities and an endless flow of content, Social Media Program can potentially be difficult to manage . The varied activities from Blogging, to participation in MicroBlogging and Discussions creates a situation where working within the given time constraints can prove to be difficult. The solutions are simple work to a plan, develop a schedule, and monitor both the performance of the Social Media initiative plus the time spent socializing.