Managing too many social media accounts: It’s a bad idea, but here’s how to do it.
I am kind of an odd fit for for social media. I am not very extroverted and I always feel awkward asking people for a photo, but like everyone else, I get certain thrill out of seeing the likes/comments/re-tweets pile up. So it is especially odd that right now, between personal and professional activities, I have 10 social media accounts on my phone right now.
1) company #1 Twitter
2) company #1 LinkedIn
3) company #1 Facebook
4) company #1 Instagram
5) company #2 Twitter
6) company #2 LinkedIn
7) personal Twitter
8) personal Facebook
9) personal Instagram
10) personal LinkedIn
With this many accounts, it is very difficult to put in the time and effort it takes to make social media an effective communication tool. Through bouts of trial, error, failure, success, and more errors, I have found a process that has made the process easier.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a social media rock star. I am just a dude trying to get by.
Seven apps that make it (almost) doable.
My ideas are in Evernote. Despite my best efforts to keep my life simple and organized, it is just not that way. My job is chaotic. My home-life is chaotic. So, when an the idea hits me, I have to jot it down in my ‘Content’ notebook, otherwise I will lose it.
My hashtags are in Evernote. This is important, especially for Instagram. Both Instagram accounts I manage are relatively new and still building an audience. Hashtags (done right) are great source of that audience growth. I have spent a good amount of time researching hashtags and I have created Notes, each with a multitude hashtags depending on which account I am posting for and what the subject matter is. I have a Note for video hashtags. I have a Note for photography hashtags. I have a Note for Canon hashtags and I have a Note for Sony hashtags. From there is a matter of copy and paste.
My editorial calendar is in Smartsheet. My company organizes a lot of our work in Smartsheets: tasks lists, project management, regional marketing requests, etc. So that means, we have a Smartsheet which includes as much of the goings-on in the company as we can gather. We take the parts of that calendar that can be good social media content and combine it with external content sources (news, industry conversations, events, holidays, etc). That gives us a pretty good foundation of content that we will be talking about for that week.
My personal media in Google Photos and my work media is in Dropbox.Aside from that fact that I have all of my photos at my disposal, the other great thing about Google Photos is the the search function. There is a something beautiful about typing in semi-random words into the search and seeing what comes up. Honestly, I just searched for ‘mustache’ and ‘laugh’ and probably got ten good Instagram-able photos.
Post creation is done in Spark Post. Spark is great for when you need to quickly combine text and an image with a bit of style. The app is mostly based off templates that give the user the right amount of control but don’t make it burdensome to make something look good and get it posted. Most posts are simple images, but when you need to add a little more, Spark is a quality tool.
My scheduling is done in Later (Instagram)or Sprout Social (everything else). When you have to manage many accounts and try and keep content flowing (and keep it current) scheduling is very important. In my company work, we get a lot of social media traction around events, like trade shows. I wouldn’t recommend scheduling too many of your posts though, you don’t want to lose the live/spontaneous element that make social media(especially Twitter) exciting.
My analytics is in Sprout Social. Analytics are great and they give you insight into what works and what doesn’t. Sprout makes it pretty easy to do a quick dive into your social analytics. You get good insight quickly and can move on to pushing more content out the door.
On location, the job is 60% shooting video and 40% posting about shooting video.