Get Your Social Media Kicking

Your social media needs a good strong heartbeat when you are running a business.

You need to keep it alive and kicking, and not let it get in a slump, or worse, end up on life support.

It's tough sometimes to find the time and the motivation to liven up your social media, but if you do, it can do wonders for your business.

And without it.... well you probably don't want to find out.

Here are some tips to help you get your social media back to a healthy, strong life:

• Engage - This is huge. Don't just post, post, and post again. Take the time to engage with your followers. Listen when they speak. Respond when they ask. Respond when they comment. Just respond. People love a reply Tweet or even a favorite Tweet or a retweet. This lets your followers know that you are interested in them, and they, in turn, will be more interested in you. Consider, Taylor Swift - she is a marketing genius, and she engages with her fans - commenting on their Instagram posts, sending random Christmas gifts and retweeting cover songs sent to her. Her fans love her, partly because she pays attention to them.

• Automate - If it's too hard for you to constantly stay on top of your social media, think about automating. As the following article looks at, 3 great tools to automate your social media are Hootsuite, Edgar, and IFTTT. These all have their pros and cons, and cover different aspects of automation, like timing, sending one post to all platforms and delivering in a platform appropriate post. Take a look and see which automation tool works best for you. It may save your social media's life.

• Learn your audience and where they are - Your engagement with your Instagram followers will be different than with your Facebook friends. Different people hang out on different platforms, so know who you're looking for and where to find them. Then treat them as you should on each platform.

• Share great content - It's important to share great content. As a business owner, you want to share things relevant to your business, right? But just as the mom who shares too much about her brilliant, socially savvy kids gets blocked, you don't want to bore or inundate your audience. Kevan Lee shares some great advice on buffersocial about this ... The 5-3-2 rule of social sharing: For every 10 posts, 5 should be from others but relevant to you and your audience, 3 should be original from you relevant to your audience, and 2 should be personal from you, showing your personal side.

• Post at regular times - Learn when your followers are on (surprisingly, there is some sanity to that and it's not hard to do) and post when they are active (your automation tool can help here). This way, great posts won't get buried and be overlooked.

The Big Picture

Social media is big. You need to be good at it.

If not, yours will deteriorate and you'll find it in the ICU before you know it, and it could be dragging your business there with it.

But with a little know how and some attention and TLC, you can get it back running stronger than ever before.

About the author

 Heather Legg is an independent writer who focuses on small business, social media, and health trends.

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