Establishing your social media presence — Part 1: define your strategy
This article is part one of a series where we will share the experience of establishing the social presence for “The Agile Entrepreneur” on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest.
In this article, we review the definition of a message for “The Agile Entrepreneur”, and social media post strategy. In part two of this series, we review the tools being used to streamline the social media post process and gather data about our readership.
In order to be true to “The Agile Entrepreneur” mindset, our approach to establish our social media presence has been to formulate a desired outcome/goal, “do rather than theorize”, learn by analyzing the result of our “doing”, and fine tune for the next iteration, aiming to continually improve along the way.
Defining the message
The goal of “The Agile Entrepreneur” is to explore ways to expand DevOps beyond the technical aspects of a business; to extend the Lean Startup approach where learning not only applies to identifying a minimum viable product (MVP), but goes beyond, to include learning how to better structure all aspects of the business with each iteration.
In its current iteration, the goal is to associate the brand (“The Agile Entrepreneur”) with topics like:
- Entrepreneurship: what does it take to become an entrepreneur, and how to be successful at it, including how to tackle innovation and embody continuous improvement.
- Leadership & individual development: how entrepreneurs (and their teams) can grow as individuals to become the best they can be, and productively interact with others.
- How-to, tools, technology: step by step instructions on how entrepreneurs can accomplish a specific goal or task, including awareness and how to leverage the latest tools and technology (e.g. this article).
- Customer experience, and functional areas: discussion on how to deliver an exceptional customer experience, as well as the “behind the scenes” requirements to get the business rolling.
- Infographics: supporting information about all things “The Agile Entrepreneur” in a visual format, to complement and enrich the learning experience.
- Social entrepreneurship: what it is be a social entrepreneur, and how it is different from other entrepreneurship models.
By regularly covering these topics in a “balanced diet” approach, we are able to continually and increasingly associate “The Agile Entrepreneur” with these topics.
When, where, and how often to post
There are plenty or articles on the internet sharing opinions about what is the best approach to be noticed in each social media platform. For us, the main goal is for “The Agile Entrepreneur” fans (followers) to be able to learn along the way, so our goal in the current iteration is to limit posts to one regular post per day (Mon-Sat) plus extraordinary posts to promote “The Agile Entrepreneur” original content.
For consistency (and ease of management), the current iteration aims to cross-post the same content across all social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+) on the same day, at optimal times for each social media channel.
These optimal times per channel continue to be refined over time, by gathering channel specific data when possible (e.g. Facebook page insights), analyzing it, and learning from the data before adjusting optimal times on a regular basis.
In order to increase productivity, we use free packages of Buffer and HootSuite, with Buffer being used to provide a granular post time control for each channel and HootSuite as a way to track activity across all channels in a “single screen”.
Coming up next
On the next article of the series, we will review tools being used to streamline the social media post process and gather data about our readership.
Read next: Establishing your social media presence — Part 2: time saving tools
This work by The Agile Entrepreneur (@AgileEntreprenr) was cross-posted here.
