TweetDeck: Manage Your Social Web Presence

TweetDeck is a great tool to manage your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) all in one place. This service allows you to set up your account (it's free!) so each account's activity shows in your dashboard. It's a great way to stay on top of your social presence across all platforms and allows you the ease to post to multiple accounts at once. There is even a scheduling option so you can push out messages at a later date.You can download a desktop version (this is what I use) or they also have apps for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Android.

My creativity comes in bursts at times. The scheduling tool allows me to put several thoughts together at once, but to schedule them to 'drip' out to my customers in a more digestable way. You could also use this tool for scheduling updates while you're on vacation. You can do a week all at once and schedule it to post daily. What a great organizational tool!

Ideas for social media updates
Scheduling updates is a great way to get in the habit of creating content regularly. You know more about your business than anyone else. Here's some quick idea-generating thoughts for you to develop into content for your customers/visitors.

• Share some of your knowledge. It might be familiar and seemingly unimportant to you, but it could be just what they want to know.
• Think of things you find valuable and see if you can share this with them in a creative way that helps them 'do life' better.
• Life is busy. Can you make it easier?
• What can you do to deliver more than is expected? 
• Don't be afraid to share personal tidbits about yourself. After all, business is really about relationships. We buy from people not businesses.

Did you notice I never gave you any ideas about promoting sales or special offers? While this can be a valuable space to share your next sale or coupon, these social areas are more about building relationships instead of selling.

Think about this - if you always have a sale or special offer, you condition your customers to NEVER buy anything at retail price! Essentially, you dilute your retail price and people feel no sense of urgency to buy something until it goes on sale or until they can get it cheaper at a later date. Therefore, the appeal of a "sale" or "coupon" has little meaning if it's come to be expected.

How are you using social media? Have you done something with success you can share? Please tell me by leaving a comment below...it may just spark a good idea for someone else!

Keeping it real for local small businesses,
Paula