Practical tips for making social media manageable and effective.
With the overwhelming number of social media platforms available, many professionals find themselves feeling either left behind or inundated. Social media, when used for business, should be practical. If a network is not making you more efficient, effective, and connected, then you should discontinue its use. Below are five simple tactics that you can use to maximize your time on social media.
- Use LinkedIin Contacts. LinkedIn Contacts work as a customer relationship management system. Once you enable to feature (at no additional cost), you are able to make notes about the contact and schedule follow up calls or emails (one time, or reacurring) empowering you to never lose track of key contacts. To sign up, visit contacts.linkedin.com.
- Create Twitter and Facebook Lists. Both Facebook and Twitter can become overwhelming when personal and business overlap. Use the lists feature on each network to categorize contacts and simplify your feed. Want to see the updates from your contacts in the building industry? Both networks allow you to click on a list to only view updates from contacts you’ve added to them. Additionally, Facebook allows you to make posts visible to only specified lists as well.
- Tag key contacts on social networks. Tagging is one of the most underused features for professionals. Nearly every major social network allows you to tag other users by using the “@” sign followed by a user name. Tagging alerts the person tagged that you are mentioning them or have posted something that you think they’ll find useful. Additionally, tagging a post with their user name can potentially send more traffic to their profile and increase their connection requests/followers. Most social media users are appreciative of well placed tags (vs. those that are simply attempting to advertise). Tagging is a great way to brag on key contacts and an efficient way to share important updates and articles with several contacts at once who have similar interests.
- Create LinkedIn prospecting lists. Instead of using the default search box on LinkedIn, click the “Advanced” to the right of the box. Now you can search for all of the directors of sales in the oil and gas industry within a 50 mile radius of 77002. Or, you can find the name of a person who occupies a position in a company of interest. Use this feature to identify key potential contacts.
