Social media isn’t like a billboard, where you put it up and then let it sit to work its magic. Far from that, social media is something you can’t take your eyes off of if you hope to effectively use it in your marketing strategy. The reason for that? Your audience never takes its eyes off of it, so your vigilance as a marketer is therefore a must. Keeping up with the pace of social media may seem overwhelming, so we’ve broken it down into a few best practices.

A quick note

When we mention keeping up with the pace of social media, what exactly are we talking about? Simply put, social media is always changing. Content can be posted, edited and deleted quickly. Engagement can spin up instantaneously. And algorithms can affect the way content is displayed with no warning.

Part of your due diligence of having a brand presence on social media is making sure your online content is correct, which means noticing and adapting to changes as they happen. These changes can be in reference to your own content, or in reference to changes made by the social media platforms themselves.

In terms of your content, this could be updating an event that has changed its date/time, keeping customers informed as to shipping delays your company is experiencing, and so on.

Best practices for keeping up with the pace of social media

Look at it every day. (Multiple times a day)

When we say every day, we mean: Every. Day. If you want to keep up in the fast-paced world of social media, you can’t skip a whole day’s worth of interaction. Staying active and consistent with your social media presence is a must for achieving success with it

Connect your personal and professional pages.

One way to ensure that you interact on social media every day is to connect your personal social media pages with your brand pages. On Facebook, it is a requirement anyway to have a personal Facebook account to operate a business page. Some platforms, like Instagram, make it easy to toggle back and forth between your business page and your personal page. For others like Twitter that do not offer such an option, you might want to just stay logged in as your business page. The point is, make it so that when you scroll social media during your personal time, you’ll also be aware of what’s going on with your brand pages as well.

Have a plan to adapt if changes need to be made.

A challenge of social media? Things can change at the drop of a hat. The great thing about social media? You can edit content at the drop of a hat! If real-world circumstances change (like the examples previously mentioned), rendering your content incorrect, it’s easy to edit posts, post updates or even delete content altogether. Anticipate that this can happen, and have a plan in place for how you are going to adapt when it does.

Disclaimer: we do caution against making a habit of deleting content on your social pages that already has engagement, as this can actually hurt you more than in can help.

Delegate if you don’t have time to give it the attention it needs.

It’s no secret that social media marketing requires constant attention. If you find that you don’t have the time to invest in it, then we suggest delegating the task to someone who does. Whether this is an internal member of your team or an agency (like us!), it will pay off to have someone who can pay attention to it.

Stay educated about industry trends and changes.

Things change! And sometimes these fast-paced changes are not ones we can control. Were talking about when Facebook takes away a feature we used to love, or when Instagram stops displaying content in reverse chronological order. Here are some tips for staying education on changes to the social media platforms themselves.

Summary

Fast-paced and social media marketing go hand-in-hand. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, use these best practices for keeping up with the pace of social media to take it one step at a time.

Still feeling in-over-your-head? Defer back to the step that says “delegate!” We’d love to help.

McNutt & Partners is a full-service advertising and digital marketing agency. Contact us today for your marketing needs! Call 334-521-1010, or visit our contact page.