Daily Social Media Checklist

We’ve put together a quick printable list for your daily social media tasks! Download it Here and post it next to your desk to keep you focused on the day to day awesomeness you need to bring!

Managing your own social media is a great way to reach your potential customer base without spending a ton of cash. Unfortunately there can be a pretty steep learning curve for those lacking in the tech savvy as well as for the busy business owner who is strapped for time. The good news is that social media doesn’t have to be a time suck – and in fact if done properly it can not only bring great results but actually be fun.

One of the things many people struggle with, even those who have the basic how-to of doing things figured out, is just what to DO on the day to day to stay consistent.

Towards helping remedy that issue we’ve created a quick daily checklist to make your social media success just a little more obtainable. While these tips are mainly focused on making marketing a part of your morning routine on Facebook this same information can be applied to your marketing on any number of platforms no matter what time of day best fits your schedule – these are good practices no matter what platform you choose.

Beverage
Coffee, tea, juice, water, whatever your morning or evening beverage of choice may be, grab a cup and have a sip or two just to get your eyes right. Consider your topic or theme for the week and go from there. Spend a little time initially looking at your fan/follower statistics; if possible take note of the times of day most people are active and work around those ideal times. You can use this time to draw up an outline or calendar for the week as well; that might look something like:

Monday – Morning: Inspirational post. Evening:How to tip.
Tuesday – Morning: Recipe. Evening: Staging tip.
Wednesday – Morning:humor post. Evening: weekend community events.
Thursday – Morning: marketing post. Evening: thoughtful quote.
Friday – Morning: Inspirational post. Evening: Have you considered…
Saturday – Morning: focus on the family. Evening: recap the week.
Sunday – Morning: Good morning quote. Evening: Ask a question.

This outline is just an example; your fan base may require more or less posting than this depending on their demographics, but you can use an outline like this so you already start each week knowing what you want to post about – this can make finding content easier!

If the platform you’re using, like Facebook, allows for post scheduling make use of that function and you can schedule a whole month of content ahead of time to keep your week more open. In essence however, you can spend as little as about 15-30 minutes online doing your daily social media actions if you do so with focus.

You can adjust this to suit your particular way of doing things but your schedule should look something like:
5 Minutes (planning content)
5 Minutes (finding content)
5-10 Minutes (creating content/interacting)

Find Content
Check your google alerts that you’ve hopefully created to help you follow new related to your industry, go to your bookmarks of favorite sites to find your content sources and see what’s new, hit Pinterest and look for inspiration — all of these things are fine. Find the sources you like and that offer the type of content your audience likes.

Some good places to generally find content include:
Google news
Local news sites
Pinterest
Instagram
LinkedIn
Industry specific sites ( inman, inc.com, realtytimes, realtor.org )

Just finding existing content and sharing it is great, it will generally be the low hanging fruit on the content tree, but it is a lot easier/faster to post than creating your own content.

Create Content
Creating content is a powerful thing. In an age where so many people are simply aggregating or reposting content from other places making your own content really allows you to stand out from the crowd – unfortunately it takes significantly more effort. Whenever possible create your own content and use it for links in your social media posts.

This may mean writing a blog post and sharing it, or creating an inspirational quote image or joke meme to post on your page; it can be as simple as typing a quote into your Status Update and hitting publish.

Anything unique to you that can be linked to a domain you control should be considered content gold – especially if it’s well made. If you’re not so good with writing or making images find and hire someone who is – it’s easy to torpedo your efforts with bad content or sub-par graphics.

Post Post Post
This is what it’s all about right?! Posting stuff! YEAH!
You should have the posting part down pretty well if you’re reading this; really the biggest thing to remember is be consistent and whenever possible link to your own content.

While posting should, and will, be the larger portion of what you do don’t forget to spend some time interacting with others as your business face. This means commenting on others posts, liking posts, sharing/retweeting posts by others. This is the KEY ACTION that most social media managers skip or don’t provide and that automated posting software simply can not give to you.

Using social media to engage as your business and interact with others is one of the most underestimated and underused functions of social media – and in fact it is often from these engagement type actions that you will gain the kind of great natural connections that traditional marketing can’t provide.

So let’s recap!

1 – Beverage. This is prelaunch time. Use this time to focus for the day and set your course.

2 – Find/Create Content. Do a little surfing, or embrace your muse and create.

3 – Post. Post the things you found or created. Schedule posts if possible.

4 – Engage/Circle Back. Spend a little time each day actually ON the network replying to fans, asking questions, and interacting with others.

5 – Have Questions?
Too busy to blog? Too pooped to post?
We can help! Talk to us about our social media management services, or if you still want to take it on yourself we’re glad to provide social media training as well!