It’s Time For A Little Social Media Spring-Cleaning

Posted: April 1, 2013 | Author: Matthew | Filed under: Community Management, Social Media | Tags: about page, facebook, google+, linkedin, profile, social media profiles, twitter, visual assets, youtube | 1 Comment »

Spring has sprung – at least it has here in Toronto – and there’s no better time to do a little spring-cleaning of your business or brand’s social media presence.

Take a few minutes out of your busy day to make sure that your social media presence is doing your business justice and ensure that no consumers stumble across anything that is out-of-date, embarrassing, or will leave them with a negative impression of your business.

Here are a few things you can do quickly to ensure that your social media presence is giving your audience and consumers an amazing first impression of your business or brand:

Delete profiles on social media properties that are inactive

Social media is an ever-changing landscape. It seems that there is a ‘new Facebook’ being introduced on a quarterly basis, and other smaller networks being launched almost every month. If you’re like me, you’re quick to register profiles to check out these new platforms to see what they’re all about. Also, sometimes it’s decided that the utilization of a certain profile is no longer strategically meaningful to your business, so you stop updating on that network.

The problem here is that these profiles frequently will outlive our interest in maintaining them. Take a few minutes to delete any profiles you’ve set up as your business or brand that are not actively being updated, and that you’re not actively engaging your audience on. The benefits of doing this are twofold: first, you’ll be able to forget about these profiles and focus your attention on the social media properties that are yielding the best results, and second, you’ll eliminate the chances of new consumers having a negative first experience with your brand by landing on one of these dead profiles.

Update profiles

When is the last time you updated the profile or ‘about’ page on your social media properties or web site? It’s probably been a while, right? Take a few minutes to review your profiles on each social media property to ensure they are giving consumers an up-to-date view on what your business is all about, what you do, and what value you’re offering your audience for sticking around to engage with your business or brand.

Also, when’s the last time you updated all of the visual assets on your social media properties? While there certainly is value in featuring a consistent profile picture to maintain instant recognition of your business or brand when it appears in news feeds or timelines, updating your header or cover images is a great way to give your profiles a fresh look, more accurately reflect your offerings, and give your consumers a more up-to-date sense of what your business stands for.

Cross-promotional links

It’s probably worth doing a double-check on all of your cross-promotional links to ensure none have broken for any reason, and also to ensure that you you’re not linking to any of your newly unregistered or inactive social media accounts. Who knows why, but for some reason, every now and then I’ll find one of my own links has broken and needs to be re-linked. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience, maybe you haven’t, but it’s worth checking out.

Transition to new social media page/channel layouts

On an ongoing basis, social media networks are updating the layouts of their pages. We saw this last year with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and more. There have been several other high-profile updates made this year, so if you haven’t transitioned to the new page layouts, now might be the time.

Earlier this year, Google+ gave users the option of featuring a massive header image. Check out Tiffany Tcheng’s article for details and sources of inspiration here.

Also, YouTube is currently transitioning to a new channel layout with unified header image area that scales automatically for different devices – PC, tablet, mobile and television. Check out YouTube’s Channel Art Guidelines here.

Do you have any additional social media spring-cleaning tips to share?

How do you ensure your social media profiles and presence stay up-to-date on an ongoing basis?

It would be great to chat with you more about this in the comments, or on Twitter @RGBSocial

Buy Yourself The Gift Of Time: Social Media For The Holidays

Posted: December 17, 2012 | Author: Matthew | Filed under: Community Management, Social Media Marketing | Tags: blog, content marketing, digital marketing, facebook, google+, holidays, linkedin, pinterest, rgb social, rgbsocial, social media, twitter | 1 Comment »

With only 8 days until Christmas, and 2 weeks until the New Year, the holidays are officially upon us. If you’re like me, you’re chomping at the bit to enjoy the season with family and friends, and to have a few days away from work. It’s incredible how a few days of relaxing can reinvigorate your enthusiasm for getting back to the grindstone and kicking the New Year off right. Breaks like these help you avoid burning out, and getting back to work with a clear and refreshed mind can help to stimulate great new thinking.

The dilemma is that the world of social media doesn’t take a break just because you are. So, following are a few ideas for how you can prepare your social media properties for the holidays so that you can focus on your personal time away from your online communities:

Blog – Schedule Posts Or Notify Your Readers Of Your Holiday Schedule

You can prepare your blog for the holidays by writing and scheduling posts to maintain your regular posting schedule. Alternatively, you can write a pre-holiday post to inform your readers of the days that you won’t be posting, and when they can check back for your first post-holiday update and return to your regular schedule.

If you decide to schedule posts, your readers will be happy for it, though you can expect your readership, page views, and engagement to dip. If you decide to let your readers know you’re going to forego a few updates to enjoy some time with family and friends, I’m sure they’ll understand and come back when you return to your regular publication calendar.

Also, you may want to consider adjusting your comment settings so that all comments are directed to your moderation queue for your review prior to posting so that nothing inappropriate is posted on your days off.

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn – Set It And Forget It… Kind Of

Pretty simple; write your updates and tweets for the holidays and schedule them with HootSuite, TweetDeck, or Facebook’s native scheduling tool.

Even though you will be wanting to take some time away from social media, you might want to consider checking in to your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn accounts for moderation purposes to make sure there isn’t anything offensive or inappropriate being posted by trolls.

Pinterest – Plan Using Secret Boards

If you’re planning on updating your Pinterest boards over the holidays, you can make things easier on yourself by loading one of your secret boards with pins. This will let you login, move an image from your secret board to the appropriate public board quickly and efficiently, with no need for capturing, creating or curating content.

BONUS TIP

Visual Assets – Update For Christmas And New Years Eve

If it makes sense for your brand, you might want to consider updating your Facebook cover photo, and your Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ header images to celebrate the holidays and/or the New Year. This might be a nice way to connect with your consumers.

A little bit of planning and advance work can save you a great deal of time for the holidays so you can focus on your family and friends, and not what’s happening online.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share for preparing your social media activity for the holidays?

If so, please feel free to share in the comments, or on Twitter @RGBSocial

Image Credit: Veer