plus tips on creating it.
by sandi leyva
the complete guide to marketing for tax & accounting firms
we post four kinds of posts and tweets on social media sites:
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- quotes from famous people
- tips
- pitches aimed to sell something
- personal
the first three (and even some of #4) can be written and posted a month in advance.
for each month, plan on one post per day, not including weekends. you need about 20 posts, five of each. keep them less than 140 characters when possible (original twitter limitation) and 120 if you want to facilitate people retweeting them.
if you are writing articles for your newsletter or blog, start there. you may be able to pull full sentences out of your article to make fine posts.
let’s take an excerpt of an article i wrote recently to see how you can make tweets out of it. here’s the source article:
the 9 biggest billing mistakes that cost entrepreneurs their hard-earned profits
a critical measure for entrepreneurs who offer services and bill either by the hour or a fixed price is the amount they bill clients each month. as anxious as many entrepreneurs are to raise their revenues, their daily activity often sabotages that goal with the same common billing mistakes.
in this article, i present you with a checklist so you can compare your behavior with the list. i’ll give some tips on how to break the bad habit, and the rest will be up to you.
- forgetting to write down or log your time spent.
i can’t be the only one who has shorted themselves in this way over the years. the answer is to muster up all the discipline you can and create a routine that you will stick to, come h*ll or high water. create a checklist for yourself when you start on account and literally write out the steps you need to follow. (step one, write down the client name, step two write down the clock time, step three, etc.)
the real challenge comes when you go into “fire” mode for a client. this is often when the time recording slips past everyone’s mind, but don’t let it. go back to your familiar checklist, and take a deep breath. when an emergency occurs on an airplane, the first thing pilots do is fly the airplane, and the second is they go to the checklist. so even when you’re in “fire” mode, the routine and checklist are your friends.
- doing tasks as they come into your inbox without batching work by client.
i know you want to be responsive and fast for the client, but you’re cheating yourself and the client is getting a freebie. you respond to that email quickly, and you think, that’s not enough time to write down. the problem is, you don’t realize there were 20 emails from that client for the week, which took a total hour. multiply that by 30 clients, and that’s a lot of time not written down.
slow down and group the emails by client, to be answered all at once, using the checklist mentioned in #1.
here are just a few posts you can write directly from the article content:
- do you know the 9 biggest billing mistakes? visit my blog to read the article: www.sandismith.com/blog
- when rushing to serve a client, don’t forget to write down your billable time! it’s one way you can avoid shortchanging yourself when billing.
- answer emails from clients in batches and not one at a time. easier to track time and not shortchange yourself when billing.
- don’t sabotage yourself in billing when tracking time. develop good systems and habits to track all of your time.
- anxious to raise revenue? make sure you have great billing habits and don’t sabotage yourself in this area.
this approach will take care of writing the tips without you having to think of fresh content or a new topic, which often takes more time than the actual article writing!
for quotes, you can use websites that specialize in quotes, look in books for quotes or google your favorite heroes you like to quote. if your topic is diversity, you can enter “diversity quotes” in google and come up with quite a bit. find five quotes for the month, and put them in a word file with your tips.
now all you need is your pitches.
some standard pitches will include:
- sign up for my free newsletter and get my free report …
- join my facebook page …
- connect with me on linkedin …
- want a free 30-minute consultation on …
you should have those standard types of pitches every month. add pitches for whatever campaign, event, sale or deadline is coming up specific to your business.
for example:
- 2 days only: 40 percent off all products [link to your store]
- april 15th is in one week. do you know where your tax accountant is? [link to free offer]
- want 11 ways to boost your sales year-round? free call [link to sign up]
last, write as many personal posts as you can anticipate. for example for september, you can wish people happy labor day or on fridays you could encourage people to have a good weekend or ask them what their weekend plans are. these can be posted in advance.
shortening links
because of the message length limitations and the fact that many people want to include links in their messages for people to find out more, link-shortening sites have sprung up.
each social media app has its own way to shorten links, so when you use hootsuite, this will be taken care of automatically.
if you have need of one outside of these uses, the one we use is http://bit.ly
there has been a wiki entry that says facebook is blocking bit.ly links, but i have not experienced this. because facebook makes frequent unannounced changes, please test your links before you post them.
posting your content
we use hootsuite to post a month’s worth of content to all three social networks.
setup
get your free account at www.hootsuite.com. under settings and social networks, add each of your accounts. with facebook, add both your personal profile and your business page, or just add your business page.
ongoing
at the top left of your screen, click on the blank field that says “compose your message” and it will expand for you. type your first message in the field. on the right, select the networks you want it to post on by clicking the icon pictures. a blue bar will show around the selected ones. if you want to send it now, click send now. if you want to send it later, click the calendar and schedule it for the day and time you prefer. click save. repeat until all your posts for the month are scheduled.
we send one message a day alternating between noon eastern time (9 a.m. pacific) and 4 p.m. eastern time (1 p.m. pacific) monday through friday, excluding holidays. rush hour is a good time to post.
rotate your content among your tips, quotes, personal posts and pitches. for example, one week’s schedule might look like this:
- monday 4 p.m. et: quote
- tuesday 4 p.m. et: tip
- wednesday noon et: pitch
- thursday noon et: quote
- friday noon et: personal
competitors to hootsuite: buffer – http://bufferapp.com, socialoomph
your social media action plan
monthly
- write 5-7 tweets from your newsletter, blog or other content.
- gather 5-7 quotes to use for posts.
- write 5-7 pitches you want for marketing this month.
- write 3-5 personal posts that you can think of in advance.
- post them to hootsuite.
weekly
- in facebook, respond to friend requests, event requests and messages.
- in linkedin, respond to requests to connect and messages. review discussions and contribute as desired.
- in twitter, respond to direct messages and follow a certain planned number of people.
daily
- as desired, spend a fixed number of minutes per day, week or month in these accounts interacting. set a timer. (no kidding.)