Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn! Oh My!

We’ve talked about Twitter, Twitter Chats, and Pinterest. But what about those other social media tools out there? For any social media strategy, the questions are the same, “How do we use social media to engage with our audience?” and “How do we communicate our story effectively?” The answers to these essential questions give your organization a purpose for engaging online in the first place.
While social media can help your brand achieve many goals, it’s not a solution for all difficulties. For a social media presence to be successful, it must have a clear purpose behind every action. Below are some tips and tricks on how to be successful on Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn for eduprenuers.

Facebook

Getting to Know You. Knowing who you are reaching out to will help determine when are the best times to reach them. Are they teachers, businesses, foundations, etc. They all interact with Facebook at different times. When you learn their patterns you have a higher likelihood to reach them. If you don’t know who your audience is, your first step would be to identify them.
Plan. Do. Check. Adjust. Measurement is the key identifying success. Your goals should be clear, reasonable, and quantifiable. How many likes, comments, and shares you would like to see each month. You can easily track these through Facebook insights, or through other management tools. By keeping track of your progress you can easily see what tactics are working and which aren’t so you can adjust as you go along.
Staying Alive. Make sure you are creating and posting regularly. Facebook should be posted to 1-2 times per day. So, to ensure you are getting your content in front of you audience’s eyes, create a content calendar that outlines your plan for at least a week. You should align these posts with your marketing strategies, upcoming events, etc.
Something to Talk About. Your post is seeing some great engagement and comments. Now what? Respond back! Customers like to see that posts on Facebook are not being done by a machine, so if they make a comment, they expect to hear a reply — quickly. When should you respond? Always, even to a negative comment. Your fans are watching if and when you respond to any comment. If you don’t, those that are feeling the same way will see the lack of response and create their own opinions. Be in control of the message.
Don’t Use That Tone With Me. You know your audience, you know what you want to say, now HOW do you say it? How do you want your business to be perceived by your audience? Are you funny, witty, serious? How you write your message is just as important as what the message is. Your voice and tone can set the stage for how your audience engages with you. The key is to be consistent and aligned with who your audience is.

Google+

What Ya Waiting For? If you are not already on Google+, what are you waiting for? Just having an account helps position yourself in Google’s search engines more favorably. Posting and linking on the page does even more! We all know the importance of search engine placement, so why not leverage every opportunity to get premier real estate on Google and start a page.
The Missing Link. The great thing about Google+ is it welcomes placement of links throughout your page. Take advantage of it! These links tie into searches through Google and directs potential customers directly to your website.
Hovercard is Not Just in the Movies.  The hovercard is your digital business card on Google+. This is a tool that, when used effectively, can create a targeted audience within Google+ and enhance your brand. Creating the perfect hovercard isn’t difficult, but critical to your business. As with setting up personal Google+ profiles, you can influence what people see when they mouse over your business name in Google+. They might do this when searching on a topic or simply responding to a post. So you’ll want to have a compelling, short tagline.
Make Yourself Seen. Getting people to circle you is crucial. Being in more people’s circles, or having more Google+ followers, improves your position on regular Google searches. The easiest way to increase followers is to add a badge to your website. Including an interactive badge helps people follow you while on your site and they don’t even have to go to Google+ to do it!
Be Interesting. Stand out from the crowd with interesting, even quirky posts. On Google+, especially, the more quirky the post, the more likes (+), comments, and shares the post sees. So if there’s any way for your business to do something unconventional, it will help people become interested in you.

LinkedIn

Engage the Like-Minded. LinkedIn connects business and professionals to others in their industries. Share the content that relates to that industry and to generate buzz and credibility. You don’t have to share posts every day, but a few times a week is a good starting place.
Showcase Your Stuff. LinkedIn has this great extra piece called Showcase Pages that gives you an opportunity to dive deeper into your company’s services and spotlight any products. Laid out similar to a Facebook Business page, it is another tool to reach a targeted audience.
Group Think Isn’t Always Bad. Create discussion groups and engage regularly. You can customize groups to potential partners and customers. A discussion with a partner would be very different than a discussion with a potential customer. If you aren’t ready to start one, join one. But don’t join a group to just join a group. Make sure they all have a real purpose and a strong audience you want to target.
Need some extra advice on how to get the biggest bang for the, proverbial, buck? Getting Smart helps edupreneurs and education leaders amplify their impact with biz dev, marketing, and strategic communication services. We provide a range of services from building and implementing strategy to public relations implementation. Interested in learning more? Visit our services page and shoot us an email!