Social media has become a major player in the realm of online marketing. We can all agree on the advances of social media since the old days of MySpace.com in 2003. And now with 27% of total U.S. internet time spent on social networking sites (Source: Experian), businesses are expected to have a social presence online.

Social media is a way for customers to interact directly with the brands they love. It’s not enough to just have a presence, implementing a strategy to correctly reach and cultivate these communities on social media websites is a must. In many cases business owners are just too busy, which is completely understandable. This is where you and I come into play as the savvy “social media specialist” we are. Follow these simple steps below and you will be on your way to social media bliss. These are some steps I would take to manage a company’s social media accounts.

Communication Is Key

The first step is to communicate with the client to discover the purpose of creating their social media profiles. Every industry is different, therefore there is no one size fits all strategy. Nor, is there an official right or wrong way to manage a social media profile, so communication is key to stay on the same page with the client.

Here are a few questions I would ask a client before I set up their profiles:

What do I want to accomplish through social media? What Are Your Goals? Example: To drive sales or to supplement customer service

  • What is your target audience?
  • Will there be anyone else, beside myself, who will be managing your social media accounts?
  • What’s your social media policy on what can be said and by whom?
  • What are some important topics you would like to cover?
  • Who are some of the industry influencers?

These questions will give you better insight to create the correct content, to reach the correct audience.

Research and Planning

The next step is to do preliminary research on your client’s industry news and trends. You want to create content that is relevant to the industry now. This would be a good time to set up Google Alerts to alert you of any new or interesting trends Google indexed, related to your chosen topic.

*Note: It is also good to speak to your client about any discounts, sale promotions, or any other company related news their audience may want to hear.

Keyword research would also be beneficial to stay on topic when creating content for a social media post.

There are tons of tools to help you conduct keyword research. My favorite tools are a Raven Tools, Google Keyword Tool, and Spyfu.

Once you have a finalized, client-approved list of keywords it’s your choice of how you want to organize the list on a content calendar, which brings me to my next point.

Organize Your Content

The next step after the research is completed is to organize the information in a content calendar. Again, how you organize the information is completely up to you. I recommend using a keyword as a theme for each month. Once that is completed you can further brake down the monthly theme into weekly segments, where you cover different topics for that week.

For example:

For month one your theme is chocolate candy.

Week 1 can be the health benefits of chocolate.

Day 1 of Week 1 can be “ Top 5 reasons Chocolate Can Lead To A Healthier Lifestyle.”

Content Calendar Example:

A content calendar is an amazing way to organize and create actionable content. It’s also a way to keep you and the client on the same page.

Again, there are tons of tools to manage social media profiles. Currently, an industry favorite is Houtsuite. Houtsuite is relatively inexpensive and offers ways to manage and schedule content on multiple profiles simultaneously.

Conduct A Reputation Audit

After research and planning is complete and you feel confident that you can effectively manage your clients social media profiles, its time to see what others are already saying about your client’s brand. 25% of consumers who complain about products on Facebook or Twitter expect a response within 1 hour (Source: American Express). Social media is an amazing tool to connect with your customer base, acknowledge them by responding to their concerns.

You should conduct a reputation audit. There may be various ex-employees, demanding clients, or even competitors that may have written bad reviews or complaints. These complaints, no matter how ridiculous, needs to be addressed. By conducting a search on Ripoffreport.com and other similar websites, you can start to get a handle on what’s being said.

You can also do a simple search in Google by typing the brand name and adding “scam” or “reviews”.

Monitor, Promote, Report

Once your audit is complete and all of your marketing ideas are organized into actionable items, the next step is monitor you’re content on the profiles, promote and report your successes . Once again, there are a plethora of tools available to monitor your audience and create custom reports. Followerwonk is amazing for monitoring a Twitter account. I use the reporting and monitoring features on Raventools, but you should find the one that fits best for your budget and your clients needs.

Marketing on social media is about brand exposure, acquiring new customers, and cultivating your client’s online communities. Social media produces almost double the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing, direct mail, or PPC. (Source: HubSpot) So, correctly managing a brand’s image is vital for any business. Remember to stay organized and respond to customer inquires because this is a two way conversation.

I welcome any ideas to do my job better, what are some ways you monitor your client’s social media accounts?

I’m in my second month here at Atomic, and I’m really starting to learn the ropes. Before joining the team, I worked for one of the largest liquidation companies in the U.S. There, I served as the client contact for questions on everything from thermostats to waffle makers.

Since I’ve had to communicate about so many different products and industries, jumping into the web design world wasn’t too much of a stretch. (I’m even starting to learn some code!)

My experience has taught me that no matter what type of project you’re trying to manage, the qualities that separate the so-so project managers from the truly awesome ones are the same. Here they are:

• Foresight. I don’t mean looking into a crystal ball—I’m talking about anticipating clients’ needs. That means doing research before your initial meeting to understand their industry, pulling design inspiration from similar sites, and suggesting ways to make their end product as great as possible—before they even have to ask.

• Leadership. This is an obvious one, but I can’t stress it enough. Research shows that we form first impressions in about 7 seconds. So make it clear from the start that you’re in charge. Projecting leadership puts clients at ease, and helps lay the foundation for a great relationship going forward.

• Organization. When you juggle as many projects as we do, you need a system. I maintain careful records of all client information in email, in folders on my computer, and in hard copy on my desk. That way, I’m never without the stuff I need.

• Communication. Being a PM is more than just making sure people meet their deadlines. I also serve as a kind of translator: explaining web developer jargon in plain English to clients, then conveying client requests back to our team. You’ve got to speak everyone’s language, and speak it well.

• Pragmatism. When you work with a team as creative as Atomic, ideas can occasionally get carried away. It’s my job to bring people back down to earth. That means keeping everyone focused on achieving milestones, meeting deadlines, and exceeding customers’ expectations.

• Empathy. Sometimes clients come to us unsure of exactly what they need. And that’s totally okay. Good PMs help clients understand their options—and don’t lose it when clients change their minds. That builds trust. And it makes communication easier when issues come up.

In fact, if I had to boil down these skills even further, I’d say they could be expressed in just two words: focus and trust. Cultivate these traits, and you’ll pull off projects with ease, whether you’re dealing with Beanie Babies, spy cameras, or golf clubs. (Trust me, I know.)

Need a web project taken off your hands? Leave it to Atomic to get the job done.

We’re always hearing how our connected world has made us crave immediacy. We follow breaking news events as they unfold. Share where we are and what we’re doing with friends and strangers. And get antsy when we’re away from our trusty screens.

So it’s no surprise that we’re also pretty impatient when it comes to waiting for webpages to load. A study by KISSmetrics showed that 40 percent of people will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to appear. A mere one-second delay can translate into a 7 percent loss in online sales. And lousy site performance can even cast a shadow on users’ perceptions of online brands.

The idea of optimizing site speed as a component of SEO hasn’t really caught on yet. Google incorporated page speed into its search algorithm in 2010, but for now it affects only about 1% of queries. But the concept is sure to explode once companies realize how much milliseconds matter.

To stay ahead of the curve, developers should get in the habit of coding with speed in mind. Here are a few ways how:

• Use a caching program. Many content management systems use plugins to manage code (for example, WordPress uses Super Cache). This means much of the content is premade, instead of being created on the fly, which can take longer to serve.

• Sniff out problem code. Malformed code can mean longer load times. For example, we had a site that loaded product data one by one instead of all at once. We consolidated the code—taking load time from 32 seconds (horrible) to about 4.

Programs like Xdebug can help you figure out what code is taking longest to execute, or where your code gets repetitive. When dealing with PHP, APC and FastCGI offer server-side optimization for better code handling.

• Try some visual trickery. You can make a site appear to load faster by loading only critical elements first. Say you have a Twitter feed in your homepage footer. The user isn’t going to see this immediately, so why hold up the entire page just to fetch Twitter? Allow it to load after your main content, and you’ll reduce perceived load time.

• Upgrade your hardware. If you’ve optimized your code and are still seeing snail-like load times, check for 100-percent CPU/memory usage—it may be time for a new server. You can also use a service like CloudFront, which hosts your site on different servers across the globe, routing the user to the closest server available.

We won’t say no to a feature that’s critical to a client’s site. But it’s important for developers to consider the tradeoffs between creating cool, but code-heavy features—and delivering the best user experience possible. Because this issue isn’t going away. We may have been more patient in the dial-up days—but we also hadn’t imagined all the cool things websites were capable of.

As the pipe expands, so will the complexity of websites. And users will demand better and better experiences. For developers, keeping up means constantly discovering ways to cut back. If you’re like me, that’s an exciting challenge.

Are sluggish page speeds holding you back? Call Atomic, and we’ll get your site in the fast lane.