Feeding the social media monster

You’ve taken the first step and established a Twitter feed with a catchy handle that speaks to your organization’s mission, a Facebook account that easily expresses your branding, and a slew of other accounts that your audience can access for information. Great!

Now, what most people new to the social media landscape quickly figure out, is that these accounts require constant maintenance and feeding, and that something you had originally blocked out a half an hour for on your Outlook calendar is creeping into most of your morning routine, and your social media monster’s appetite is getting bigger every day.

Tame the monster hunger pangs by employing these simple things:

Think about the processes of the things that you tweet and post about. What pre- and post-process events could you use as fodder for your social media feeds? For example, have a Field Day coming up? A guest speaker? Get some behind the scenes photos and post them to your accounts to drum up some excitement about the event. How are you preparing for Field Day? Does the guest speaker have an area of interest you can piggyback on?

Set up Google alerts. Setting up alerts allows you to receive emails when an article regarding a certain subject area is found on Google. This saves you from having to trawl the Internet every hour hoping to find something to post.

What’s related to you? What are some tangential subject areas related to you, your organization, or your organization’s mission? Just because you only deal with an esoteric type of research doesn’t mean you can’t branch out as long as you bring content back to you or your organization’s mission. Use this as a way to connect with other social media users also. Maybe you are a smaller organization that deals with food security. Find some larger ones such as the Food and Agriculture Organization and re-tweet or mention them on your Twitter feed or follow them on Facebook.

Don’t be afraid of humor. If a lighter tone fits your editorial voice occasionally or regularly, it’s ok to interject your feeds with some random, off-the-wall memes. Just remember to always keep your feeds professional and make sure humor fits the tone your organization is going for and does not conflict with its mission goals.

Using these tips will keep a healthy pipeline of information coming to your audience, and the stomach rumblings of the social media monsters at bay.