I don’t have time for Social Media

“I’m a Manager. I don’t have time for Social Media”

I too struggle some days as well to schedule tweets, check my streams and update my status.

But in a large corporation, surely it’s a numbers game? If you can have all your associates, telling all their contacts and colleagues what the latest is from your company – why wouldn’t you do it?

Establish guidelines for your organisation as to what is appropriate to share in Social Media. Reiterate their employee code of conduct, data privacy and information security obligations. Remind associates of legal implications if you are in a regulated industry (FSA etc).

With that complete here are two phases all associates/employees in any company (big or small) should be aiming to complete in 2012 .

Phase 1

Social Media 101

• Do I have a LinkedIn account with a completed profile, appropriate corporate image and added my contacts.
  • Am I updating my status with mentions of the recent material released on our public website that is relevant to my LinkedIn audience.
  • If I am running/presenting/attending an open registration event – have I updated my status to reflect this.
• Do I have a Twitter account with completed bio and link to Towerswatson.com or my LinkedIn account. 
  • Am I updating my status with mentions of the recent material released on our public website that is relevant to my Twitter audience.
  • If I am running/presenting/attending an open registration event – have I updated my status to reflect this.
  • Pre, during and post an event – have I updated my status mentioning the event’s #hashtag and relevant “publically available” pre reads and relevant quotes.

Phase 2

Once comfortable with your accounts try these 201 tips.

Get personal
When appropriate, respond to questions on Twitter, LinkedIn and well, anywhere on the internet.

Be consistent
In both your messaging tone and frequency of posts.

Get technical
Connect your accounts using www.ifttt.com so that “New tweet by you with hashtag X” is posted to your LinkedIn account as a status update (or to other Twitter accounts you manage). Doing this – rather than piping all your updates to LinkedIn retains value for your colleagues, and eliminates the noise, if you are tweeting about events or multiple articles.

For those who are comfortable with their Facebook account being for business. Post there initially, as Facebook API posts are algorithmically downgraded in the highlighted stories stream. Then share with Linkedin and Twitter.

If you have created a lot of material in one day – schedule your Tweets and LinkedIn status updates using www.bufferapp.com,www.ifttt.com or www.hootsuite.com.