Top 10 Social Media Tasks You Should Do Daily
With more than 2.2 billion monthly Facebook users, it's no big surprise why every business now utilizes social media to market their brand. Social media marketing aids in SEO goals, improving reputation and brand recognition, and it allows you to connect with your customers.
But understanding how it works and doing the marketing are two different things.
There's a ton of social media tasks to handle, from creating interesting new content, replying to comments, and appropriately posting content across the different platforms like Pinterest and Instagram. But to even begin thinking about all that, you have a lot of metrics to study and a data-driven schedule to organize.
To help you get started, or continue growing, here is a list of the top 10 social media tasks you should do every day.
1. Post New Content
The most critical task in social media marketing is to post fresh, new content on a regular basis. Even a simple image post or tweet can spark engaging conversations between you and your followers. Constantly posting announcements or promos can also bring in new followers, and potentially new customers.
Why is it important to post new content each day? Well, for starters, chances are your competitors post regularly. If you don't keep up, your content will be yesterday's news and all your followers will be busy engaging with the competitor's posts instead of yours. But more importantly, posting regularly helps improve your visibility and SEO. Afterall, social media channels are also searched engines in themselves.
Posting every day can be very tiring and monotonous, especially if you are doing this by hand. The good news is you don't have to!
There are tools like HootSuite and IFTTT that let you schedule posts ahead of time. You can schedule posts weeks ahead to free up your time to do some of the other daily tasks, like focusing on the core of your business, or maybe check brand mentions on the social hemisphere.
2. Check Industry Mentions
Brand mentions are important to check on a daily basis too. Social media marketing experts refer to this process as social listening. This metric lets you measure how relevant you are your audiences social circles.
Why keep track of mentions? First of all, you want to check real-time data to know if people still talk about your brand or not, and the topics that come up. The more mentions you have, the more relevant you are to your audience.
Following those mentions let you unravel people's perception of your company and give you a chance to know which comments or messages you should respond to first. Look for negative mentions too because you'll want to respond and do some damage control before those issues get out of hand.
You can also check which of your posts get the most engagement, allowing you to do more research and develop a successful social media strategy moving forward. Partaking in social listening allows you to know which posts generate positive responses and shares and which ones get ignored.
3. Respond to Comments and Messages
Every day you'll also want to make it a habit to read and respond to comments and messages.
Check your company's social media inbox and see if someone asked a question regarding your products or services. Those are the ones you'll want to answer first because they're leads already showing interest. You only have to push them a little further to convert them to buy or subscribe.
Responding to comments is important to constantly do as it shows your followers that you take time out of each day to read and reply to what they have to say. Positive experiences like this help drive sales.
Not only does it give them a sense of importance but it also encourages others to comment. Other people will see that you don't ignore comments. This convinces them to comment and interact with your brand as well.
4. Damage Control
As you track down comments and messages, it's more than likely you'll end up spotting a few negative ones too. You might see a bad review on your Facebook page or a rant on Twitter. Make it a point each day to address these issues.
Don't let days or weeks go by without responding to the negative feedback.
If you ignore these comments, reviews, and messages then others will see them (and your lack of response). This may lead to other customers or potential customers getting the wrong idea about your brand and can lead to lost leads. Try to rectify the issue by addressing the problem directly and professionally.
Show people you care and that if there was a legitimate problem, show you're willing to work and improve upon it. People are more forgiving of a business' failings if the company acknowledges these problems or if they can legitimately defend themselves against a false review.
That said, don't answer negative feedback with your own negative arguments. This can leads to an "online war". This not only makes matters worse as it paints a bad image for your brand, but will also give an opportunity for your competitors to swoop in and steal customers.
5. Analyze Metrics
Every day, make it a habit to visit the "Insights" or "Metrics" section of your social media account and study the metrics. Analyze the numbers because these show detailed results of your business' social media efforts.
As mentioned, you'll want to look for mentions but there are other numbers to monitor. Look at how many times people shared your post, how many saw your posts, and new page likes.
You'll also want to check your social media page's bounce rate, click-through-rate, and conversion rates. Check if your ads and their placement get the attention you aimed for. There's a lot of information you can gather from looking at these numbers.
You can determine what time and what day people engage with your content the most, what kind of posts they like or share often, and what kind of social media activity garners the most conversions from new audiences.
Most social media platforms, like Facebook or Twitter, have their own analytical tools. This simplifies things since you can move forward with the free tools given to you. However, for better results, you should upgrade to tools like BuzzSumo, AgoraPulse, and Brandwatch.
6. Work on Future Posts or Updates
As mentioned above, use tools like HootSuite to schedule posts ahead of time. This will give you more free time each day to do other important social media tasks, such as actually creating the posts that will be sent to your channels.
This goes beyond spending time on Photoshop designing posters or adding captions to images for Instagram. You also have to spend time on the social media platform itself so can get the feel of each platform and your audience so you can start making the appropriate captions, hashtags, and content.
Hashtags, in particular, require a bit of research and strategy. You'll want to create hashtags that become popular or ones that are already trending in the online world and are related to your business.
Also, keep in mind that the optimal number of hashtags you use differs from platform to platform. Using three to four is fine for Facebook but not for YouTube or Twitter. Tracking which hashtags are popular is a crucial daily task you shouldn't forget to complete.
7. Reach Out to Your Followers
Responding to their comments and messages isn't enough. Take a moment each day to reach out to followers who don't always engage with your posts. Try to spark their interest so that they start liking, sharing, or commenting on your social media posts more often.
You don't have to do this with dozens of people every day. Picking two to three each day and send them a personal message. Never resort to pasting recycled content because it'll seem automated and impersonal.
Not sure what to tell your audience?
You can start by sending them promos and reminders of recent discount offers. If you're running a contest, try to entice them to join, especially if the contest involves sharing your posts with their friends.
Sending images and videos are also a good way to connect with your followers. You can also send out surveys so that they can help improve customer experience but also remind them that they follow your business. That said, make sure to schedule an appropriate time you send surveys to guarantee higher response rates.
Connecting with your followers is only the beginning, however. You should also take a few minutes each day to try and connect with people who don't follow your business at all.
8. Engage with New People
This is perhaps the most difficult task on this list but it's something you have to accomplish each day for optimal results. There are multiple ways to do this and the most important one is to respond to social media mentions.
Did someone mention your brand in a tweet? Take a moment to re-tweet it or reply to their post. This sparks new engagement between you and the person, regardless if they follow your business page or not.
If a blogger mentioned your business in one of their posts, leave a comment or share their blog post on your Facebook page. If someone asked about your business on Quora or Reddit, take time each day to answer those questions directly so they don't get inaccurate answers from someone else.
As mentioned, you should study your metrics every day. If you follow this, you'll see when your followers share your posts, exposing the content to their friends and family. Take time to comment on these shared posts because it lets the non-followers see that you interact with people directly.
9. Connect with Influencers
Influencers are the new celebrities in the online world.
Sure, getting a big Hollywood star to post an Instagram picture with them wearing your merchandise is great but there's a bigger market with social media influencers. As a matter of fact, influencer marketing is one of the most important social media tasks to do since it helps you reach a bigger audience than you could with your own efforts.
What are influencers? You can consider them social media celebrities who focus on a specific niche.
Know of a film critic on YouTube who has over 10,000 subscribers or an Instagram account focusing on the latest fashion with 5,000 followers? If you offer something they may be interested in, then you should reach out to these influencers. Send them a free sample and ask if they can post something on their account to let their followers know about your business.
This all starts with finding and then reaching out to related influencers.
Get online every day and look for new social media celebrities. Look for those with a ton of positive feedback and thousands of followers. Once you've got a list, take time each day to send them a message with your proposal.
10. Follow Back
Got new followers? Make it a point each day to follow back, especially if you're using Instagram or Twitter.
That said, don't follow back everyone. You don't want to flood your news feed with their daily posts. Instead, focus on following people or businesses related to yours, especially those who are authorities in the field you focus on.
Look at popular influencers or celebrities for great examples. Many Hollywood stars have millions of followers but they personally only follow a handful of accounts. This number includes other influencers they work with or media sites that may occasionally feature them.
Always take your time each day to check everyone who follows you and only choose to follow back those who you think will help grow your business. Look for influencers, media companies, similar businesses you can partner with, or customers living in places you didn't think your business would reach.
Whatever you do, don't buy followers! Social media giants like Facebook can and will discover this. It's only a matter of time and the penalties you'll suffer could shut down your business.
Daily social media tasks help keep your business afloat. See what competitors in your industry are doing every day successfully on social media. There may be critical industry-specific tasks that you should start doing too!
Our social media marketing tactics will help you track the data, understand the numbers, and adjust your strategy to better engage your audience. These daily tasks ensure you stay relevant even when the competition keeps on trying to hog the spotlight.
However, it doesn't end there. There are weekly and monthly tasks to start doing as well. This includes considering other digital marketing plans outside social media platforms, like how to use AdWords to your advantage.
Don't have the time or expertize? That's where Digital Shift comes in. Whether you want more conversions or get found on Google Maps, our knowledge can help you reach those goals. Contact us and get started right now.
