With so many popular social media platforms, it's often necessary to have a presence on several sites. Without some planning, juggling all the content can be a headache for a busy social media manager.
Develop a Strategy
The first step should be to decide how you are going to handle all your accounts in terms of your overall strategy. This includes determining:
- The type of content you will post
- How you will handle comments
- How frequently you will post
- In-house style guidelines and "voice" for each account
This might seem like unnecessary work but the more accounts you have, the more you'll appreciate having a dedicated guide for each. If you have multiple accounts on one platform, it will help you stay on message for each account and avoid duplicate, or inappropriate, content. It's also important to develop a strategy so that should someone need to take over for you, the content and voice can stay consistent.
Target Your Content
It's common for people to use the feature that automatically posts the same post in multiple accounts; so for example, if you post to Facebook the post automatically goes to Twitter as well. This isn't a great strategy though if you have many products and services to promote, different audiences and messages, and multiple goals for your social media.
You need to target your content to best fit the platform. That can include creating multiple versions of one post with different text, captions, images, videos, and posting times. This is where the strategy guide for each account comes in handy, along with an editorial calendar to track all your content. Your calendar should include the content of your posts, the accounts you are posting on, and when they will post.
Reviewing Metrics
With so many accounts, reviewing your social media ROI can be a bit cumbersome. It helps to have SMART goals for each account. You can gather metrics from all your different accounts and compare their performance toward their individual goals and to each other. You can do this with a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. An easier way is to make use of social media management tools specifically created to showcase this information in an easily digestible format.
A regular audit of your accounts will help you to see which ones are building engagement and which need some tweaking. In some cases, you may decide to dedicate your priority focus to one more accounts and reduce the time you spend on others. Often a business will decide they must have an account on every popular social media platform when only a few really fit its demographic. Developing a strategy for each can help prevent this from happening, but if you are already managing multiple accounts, regular audits can show you which platforms are the best option, and which should be minimized or dropped.
Tools and Automation
Considering how much time managing multiple accounts can take, the more you can automate, the better! There are some excellent online programs to help make your social media workflow easier.
Sprout Social
This social media management program lets you schedule posts across many sites. Features include tracking engagement with your profiles within one dashboard and detailed reports on your metrics for all your accounts. You can run a free test report to see their analytics. Sprout Social has plans suitable for a single person, small businesses, and large corporations. All plans have a free trial and pricing begins at $99 per month and goes up to $249 per month.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite has similar features to Sprout Social. You can manage up to 35 social accounts within one dashboard, track engagement, and schedule posts in advance. What sets Hootsuite apart from Sprout Social is their dashboard interface. Hootsuite also integrates with many more popular business programs such as Salesforce, Slack, Brandwatch, and many more. Hootsuite is also a nice option for a small business just starting out as their free plan lets you manage three profiles with some decent reporting features. Their Pro plan is $129 and the Business plan is $499, and both allow up to 50 profiles.
Choosing Tools
There are many other social media management tools online similar to Hootsuite and Sprout Social. When choosing a tool, make sure that the program lets you monitor your social media platforms of choice. Not every program handles every site. Each tool also has different graphical interfaces and there's one for every different way individuals prefer to receive their data.
Managing Multiple Social Accounts
Juggling many social media accounts within and across platforms doesn't have to be difficult. Creating profiles for each account's strategy, regularly reviewing your metrics and auditing your work, and using automation tools can lead you to social media success.
