This is a guest post written by Michael Deane.

Running your own coaching business is both an exciting and scary time, especially when you’re going at it alone. As you are probably aware, the use of several social media accounts for your business is not just a bonus, it’s a necessity.

Today, more and more consumers are turning to the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to find out more about a company, receive customer support and even buy products.

Because of this, businesses of all sizes – from start-ups to international corporations – must be easily found on social media and have a strong and active presence. As the owner-operator of a small business, however, your time is precious and you need to balance managing your social media pages with the other aspects of running your business.

Although outsourcing your social media may seem like a good idea, this can get expensive and the person you hire will not know anything about your business. Not at first. Even when they do learn, you will always be much more in tune with the company, with yourself as a brand, with what you yourself want to achieve in business. Whilst still in its infancy, your company’s social media pages are better managed by you.

So, how can you go about managing them effectively?

Use only relevant social media websites

There are a lot of social media sites out there and the more you sign your business up for, the more work you will have to do. Whilst you are still working alone, and your business is still small, only use social media sites which are relevant to your company.

Facebook is the obvious one and you will need an account on that, but what about the others? You could also benefit from having a Twitter account, as well as a LinkedIn business profile for communicating with potential clients. Pinterest, YouTube, Tumblr and Snapchat can all be left out of the equation for the time being, perhaps forever.

Undertake social media training

Although you may have had a Facebook account for several years, running your company’s Facebook page is a lot different to managing your personal one. Company pages are a lot more technical and require a lot more know-how if you want to operate them effectively.

Undertaking a quick social media training course will help you get to grips with the basics of managing a social media account for your business, how to analyse and understand the many different metrics provided by platforms, how to build an audience and how to engage with those who like your page.

Dedicate time for social media

You should have a certain amount of time out of your workday dedicated to social media. During this time, you should be making new posts, updating your page and responding to any comments or questions left by customers, or replying to direct messages which have been sent to your page.

It is important that you do this every single day, as you will get new messages and comments daily. If you don’t interact quickly or at all with the people who like your page, you will lose followers.

Learn by doing

The only way to really improve with social media is to keep going. Although it may seem confusing at first, especially when you look at all the different settings, options and metrics, it all starts to become clearer as time goes by.

You can only improve by doing as above – dedicating time to social media each day – and learning from your mistakes. The importance of having an active presence on social media cannot be underlined enough. Even if you are personally against social media, it is not something you can avoid if you want your company to be successful and thrive in the modern day.

About Michael Deane 

Michael has been working in marketing for almost a decade - and has worked with a huge range of clients, which has made him knowledgeable on many different subjects. He has recently rediscovered a passion for writing, and hopes to make it a daily habit. You can read more of Michael's work at Qeedle, or catch up with him on Twitter. 

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