3 things you can do today to cure it and multiply your communication efforts.

(updated April 2018)

Many people think that social media marketing is easy and that anyone can do it. That’s why many companies still use their interns to publish on Facebook or LinkedIn. Every day, I see dozens of examples of social media publications gone wrong. From a Facebook personal account used by a company (yes, in Argentina, it is still very common!) or a LinkedIn account with the name of the company instead of the actual contact name, which defeats the whole point of LinkedIn.

Worst of all, even so-called experts are doing it – yesterday I saw a local social media agency using a LinkedIn account with the name of their company as their “first name and last name” – spelling mistake included!!!)

If you search online, you will find tons of “how to” guide on social media but how do you know if it is right for your business?
By the time you read them and implement their advice, how do you know that they are not already out of date?

There is ONE thing that is not going to change and it is what you communicate to your audience, no matter the platform!

To do this correctly, you will want to apply the 3 points below:

 1 – Add a blog section to your website and make it the “go-to” source of information on the subjects you are most passionate about.

Social Media platforms should not be used to develop new ideas but are the vehicle of those ideas.  As Twitter defines itself, it is an information network and not a social network.  Although conversation is still happening on Twitter, it has now become a place to share your ideas meanwhile the conversation has shifted to Facebook!

Your own personal or professional blog is the place to:
– develop ideas
– Start conversations with the readers who comment on your blog posts
– explore new concepts
– throw crazy ideas or not-so-crazy ideas
– answer the questions asked by your readers
– offer solutions to your readers to alleviate their problems/worries or pains
– bring pleasure and hope to your readers
– recommend your own or other people’s products or services.
In a nutshell, it will be a place that you fully own and manage.

Top Tip: A self-hosted WordPress blog is the ideal blogging platform for your own blog. If you’re not sure what I am referring to, read my notes here on how to get started online

However, to be able to totally own it and manage it, you will need an action plan for your business.

2 – Plan and keep track of your daily activities

Failing to plan is planning to fail, they say. Well, I don’t like using cliché but this is true and even more so with blogging and using social media.

This is where the new shiny object syndrome comes into play.  It affects us all, whether we are new online or a seasoned online business owner.  The strongest cure for this is planning. We are all tempted to try new social platforms, especially if all our friends are talking about.

As mentioned in a previous post on productivity, I strongly recommend that you plan all your marketing actions before each day and even better at the beginning of each week.

Let me give my own example: it took me nearly a month to formulate my own schedule as I had to try and see what worked best for me.

I have divided my week into 6 main areas of work:
– Weekends: Generate creative ideas (creating videos, brainstorming on titles and drafting blog posts with 4/5 bullet points no more)
–  Monday: Work on my blog – publishing a new blog post/interview or adding new elements/videos or pages
– Tuesday: Connect with people in Facebook groups – sharing my latest post and general commenting
– Wednesdays: Write articles
– Thursday: Prepare status updates for Facebook/Instagram and the other platforms that are relevant to my audience (and add them to Hootsuite)
– Friday: Prepare my email updates

Lately, I have added a task to my list as I am doing a video series of 100 tips in 100 videos – Check out my videos on YouTube – youtube.com/user/sabinefep

This way, I don’t get sidetracked by shiny new objects (whether it is a new social media, a new marketing system or a new guru) on the days when I am not meant to spend time on it. It still isn’t perfect as sometimes I have to skip a day due to unforeseen activities but I always try to make up for it the following day.

Top tip: Once you’ve created your weekly planning schedule, stick it on your wall or better, place it as a background image on your desktop, that way, every day, you’ll know exactly what you will need to be working on.

 3 – Make advantage of online tools to help you communicate better and more efficiently.

So my first advice is to concentrate on the minimum number of platforms to avoid confusion. Another risk of the new shiny object syndrome is to create an account for every social media out there and then fail to keep them active. Rest assured that very soon, you’ll feel overwhelmed by it all! So choose one or two platforms where you are the most likely to find people interested in your blog.

My second advice is to use an online tool to help you plan your communication ahead. This way, you won’t need to spend a lot of time on social media each day. For this, there are many online tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer that you can use to share your blog posts and communicate to your followers and readers.

But again, I don’t want to give you more stuff to get sidetracked with so I will only concentrate on just one tool here.
It’s called Buffer and it defines itself as a smarter way to share on Social Media.  Buffer makes it super easy to share any link or page that you’ve just read. In essence, what it does is to place your updates/links in a queue and they will be published on the corresponding social media platform at a set time. You choose the timings, the platforms and the order of appearance.

For instance, if you want to tweet 4 times a day (as shown on the image below) and send 2 status updates on Facebook you can set the timings of each posting, you decide on which days of the week they will go out.

Then, all you will have to do is to start adding new posts/statues/links to the queue whenever you find something interesting you want to share. It also comes with some useful apps which means that within Facebook, you will be able to use Buffer to add to the queue using the traditional share button (see image below).

The great thing about buffer is that you can prepare all your week’s updates in advance for each of the 3 following social platforms – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you want to add more accounts, you can always sign up for their premium offer.

Another tool that I use and which is helping me a lot is the browser extension or add-on: Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator.
Here is how it looks.

As you can see I get a nice quote instead of the hundreds of status updates from my thousands of contacts and page likes. No more distraction and scrolling down for hours. It means that I can go straight to my personal page, business page or my groups without wasting time anymore. And don’t worry, you still get the notifications from my friends and events you’re going to, etc.

This is without a doubt the best productivity hack that I have been using in the last few years!

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So, do you feel like that you can cure your new shiny object syndrome?
What is your current biggest obstacle when it comes to interacting on social media platforms? Need some help?

Please leave a comment below.

To your success abroad!