HOW: WHO’S THE KING OF YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT?
Don’t Make It Too Hard to Start
In 2012, I spent the better part of a year working with the team at the Vatican to onboard Pope Benedict to Twitter, and Wired magazine eventually called me “The Woman Who Got the Pope on Twitter.” In the years since, the number one question I get about this experience is: Does he really do his own tweeting?
Spoiler alert: Yes and no.
At Twitter I spent years onboarding high-profile individuals to the platform. The Pope, Warren Buffet, actors, musicians, CEOs, politicians, and philanthropists all shared the fact that their time was limited and taking on one more thing was not high on their list. Could someone on their team just do the tweeting for them?
I remember sitting with Sally Osberg, then-CEO of the Skoll Foundation, over lunch one day in the UK as she posted her first tweets. She was excited but concerned. Where would she find time in her busy day to keep it up?
First, I told her about Arianna Huffington. Huffington had once told me that posting to Twitter was an easy thing to fit into the margins of her day while she waited for meetings to start or while riding as a passenger in the car.
Then I told her about Obama.
When President Obama won the election in 2008, his campaign had garnered 5 million social media followers, a huge number in the pre-Kardashian days.1 Here are some of the breakdowns of what that looked like on the various social networks:
By November 2008, Obama had approximately 2.5 million (some sources say 3.2 million) Facebook supporters, outperforming McCain by nearly four times. Obama had more than 115,000 followers on Twitter—more than twenty-three times those of McCain. Fifty million viewers spent 14 million hours watching campaign-related videos on YouTube, which was four times McCain’s viewers.2
When he was elected, his followers received one final message: “All of this happened because of you. Thanks, Barack.”3
Ultimately, it was widely accepted that “a major success factor for Obama’s victory was how Obama’s campaign used social media and technology as an integral part of its strategy, to raise money, and, more importantly, to develop a groundswell of empowered volunteers who felt they could make a difference.”4
Given all this, you would expect he was personally doing much of his own tweeting.
You would be wrong.
Most notably, in a speech in 2009 he said, “I have never used Twitter.”5
It wasn’t until January 2010, a full fifteen months after winning the election as the first US president to truly embrace social media, that President Obama pushed the button on his first tweet. He was visiting the American Red Cross following the devastating earthquake in Haiti and sent out a tweet from the American Red Cross account.6
@RedCross
President Obama pushed the button on the last tweet. It was his first ever tweet!
Even after that, though, it would take another year for him to start tweeting (occasionally) on his own. In 2011, President Obama and Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey held a Twitter town hall at the White House. It featured President Obama answering questions that came in via Twitter using the hashtag #AskObama during a streamed event online and then sending a sample tweet from @whitehouse.7
@whitehouse
BREAKING: 1st Twitter @townhall w/ Pres Obama at the WH on 7/6 @ 2ET. #AskObama your Qs on the economy & jobs: askobama.twitter.com
And finally, it wasn’t until 2015 that he sent his first tweet on his own personal account—this time poking fun at Bill Clinton.8
@billclinton
Welcome to @Twitter, @POTUS! One question: Does that username stay with the office? #askingforafriend
@POTUS44
Replying to @billclinton
Good question, @billclinton. The handle comes with the house. Know anyone interested in @FLOTUS?
Ultimately, the fact that Obama’s messages on social media were generally written and posted by his campaign staff for so many years did not detract from his power on social media.
Spoiler alert: this is true of many high-profile individuals. Although some actors, businesspeople, and politicians like Arianna Huffington or President Trump may do their own posting, others rely on a team to manage their social media. For the most part followers don’t know the difference.
In the case of Pope Benedict, after he clicked “tweet” on the iPad in the televised launch event in December 2012, his staff took over. Most of the tweets during his tenure were direct quotes from his weekly homilies.
It is easy for brands to get hung up on the “who” as a means to putting off getting started. Everyone wants the perfect social media strategy, and many brands think that must start with the perfect person creating the posts. Although it may be ideal to have a CEO or founder personally post their social media messages and interact with their followers, that is often not the reality.
A great brand should have a social media manager or team who can take on the task of representing the personality of the brand and the founder when needed and following up with fans, making sure people are heard and appreciated.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
HOW MANY ACCOUNTS DOES YOUR BRAND NEED ON EACH PLATFORM?
Most brands have multiple products, divisions, or initiatives they want to talk about in their social media marketing. That’s why so many brands these days face the question of how many different social media accounts they should create. Should every initiative have a separate account? How specific should one get? Should you divide and conquer? Or consolidate and win?
First, take the Social Media Brand Evaluation to determine your social media priority platforms (see appendix 2).
Then remember that your brand should only ever consider multiple accounts within one platform (several different Facebook accounts for different areas of your business, for example) on your priority platforms.
Generally speaking, multiple accounts within one platform can get messy—fast. For some businesses, this strategy of dividing up their efforts can quickly snowball into dozens of Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook accounts all targeted to different products or divisions. This is a headache and a half, and from a branding perspective it’s almost always way more trouble than it’s worth.
Take the experience of Tsh Oxenreider, a bestselling author and pod-caster who runs a business focused on simplicity. Like many brands, she initially created different accounts to represent the different sides of her business. Then, she felt the backlash. Ultimately, she decided to stop posting on the Instagram account dedicated to her podcast and instead redirect all her efforts to her main Instagram account.9
As she explained to her followers:10
@thesimpleshow
In some ways, it’s been fun to watch this Simple Show IG account grow, mostly to hear your thoughts and reactions to episode drops! But in smaller, more acute ways, I’ve learned that trying to divide and conquer for the sake of Being Everywhere is the opposite of how I like to steer my ship. I’m all about fewer but better. I mean, SUPER all about it. . . It’s the best way for me to live my life and run my work.
And so, while I’ll keep this IG account live (mostly so people can tag it when they want), I’ll be reminding you of new SS episodes only on my personal account from now on @tshoxenreider, specifically in my Stories. And I’ll be cultivating community over in Patreon, where I’d love for you to join for more connection with me at patreon.com/tsh (and where I’ve got a new, patron-only show for you!). As always, subscribing to SS is the BEST way you’ll never miss an episode, so make sure and do that wherever you listen to podcasts.
And as always, here’s to doing things the way that works for YOU, no matter what They™ say. It’s a good place to be, and it’s where I always want to stay. I’m so grateful for each of you! 
Importantly, the downside of dividing your efforts isn’t just an emotional one. It’s also about practical social media engagement success. The reality is that there are often algorithmic benefits to growth when you consolidate your social media efforts. Algorithms vary by platform and are constantly changing, but typically the more followers you have on an account the more likely your content will be seen. This means that you’ll have a better chance of reaching more people if the bulk of your followers are consuming and engaging with your content in one place. Other ancillary benefits exist as well. On some platforms, for example, you need a minimum number of followers to get verification.
All this to say, should you have multiple accounts for different products or divisions?
My rule of thumb is that whenever you can keep things on one account, do.
WHEN TO POST ON SOCIAL MEDIA
If you craft a great social media post, you want to make sure it gets the attention it deserves. That said, it can be hard to know when the right time is to post.
When it comes to the best time of day and the best day of the week to post on social media, the key is to know your audience. The same goes for considering a big sales promotion; it is important to know the right months of the year that work for your industry. Different audiences have incredibly different behaviors when it comes to when and how they use digital media.
Let’s look at a few examples.
If you run a nonprofit organization, you know that December is likely your biggest month of the year to solicit donations and that January is a ghost town. In contrast, if you are in the health and fitness industry you know that January is when all the magic happens. A breast pump manufacturer targeting new moms on maternity leave might get its most engaged activity on social media during afternoon naptime hours or after bedtime on weekdays. A meditation app that targets busy executives might find that the early morning slot before the work day starts on weekdays is best.
And it’s not always intuitive. A church pastor might think her worshippers are turning off technology on the Sabbath, but find out that Sundays are the time when her motivational quotes are most likely to spread. I sell an online productivity course that teaches real people with real lives to finally become productive. I always see a huge uptick in customers to my Work by Design products in January, which makes sense, but I also see interest in the end of August. I believe that so many of my customers juggle both work and school-age kids that they see the fall as a second New Year. Finally, no two brands within the same industry are the same. Back to the car example: Tesla buyers and Volvo buyers may both be in search of a new car, but chances are their lists of needs and their lifestyles are vastly different. Do those weird doors have child safety locks? #askingforafriend
Knowing your audience is so important that it’s better to figure it out for yourself over time than to listen the experts.
Claire Pelletreau is a Facebook ads expert who helps small businesses. Several years ago, she discovered that both engagement with her social media content and the sales of her course, Absolute FB Ads, were at their highest on Sundays and Mondays. She guessed that was because people wanted to start their week off on the right foot, but to be honest she wasn’t really sure. And ultimately it didn’t really matter. Whatever the reason, the evidence was so overwhelming that she decided to show the ads for that course only on Sundays and Mondays.11
The best thing you can do is to try different times of the day and days of the week to evaluate over time what works for your followers. To start, take your best guess of when you think your followers might be most engaged and schedule posts to go out at those times. Then, dig into your analytics and test. Most third-party tools that post your content offer great analytics. (More on this coming up.)
Additionally, remember that if you plan to schedule social media on several different platforms, you will see different behavior. This makes sense if you simply think about how you yourself use platforms differently. If you’re a corporate employee, you might be more likely to read LinkedIn during the day and retreat to Facebook at home after work. If you’re an entertainment blogger, you might be frequently posting and commenting on Instagram during the weekdays but use Twitter to live-tweet your favorite TV shows at night.
TOOLS TO USE FOR POSTING
Although it is certainly possible to independently post your social media updates within the individual native platforms, many brands find it easiest to use a third-party management tool to help them manage all of their social media platforms at once. Let’s look at a few of the most popular tools out there.
Hootsuite. This tool has been around since the early days, and it’s the first third-party tool I used to manage my social media accounts. It is arguably the most well-known of all management options and offers plans for businesses of all sizes. It’s an all-around good choice. Hootsuite also does a great job allowing for comment moderation within the system, something that not all tools offer.
Buffer. The great benefit of a tool like Buffer is that you can put all your planned posts into one content bucket, and then the system parses out the content automatically into the schedules you preset for each individual platform. Even when you are planning to post the same content on several social media platforms, Buffer will stagger the schedule, so the posts go out at different times. Remember that one drawback of tools like Buffer is that they are not set up for comment moderation. Thus, when you want to engage with those commenting on your posts, you should go directly to the platforms themselves.
Sprout Social. This is a more robust tool popular with small businesses aiming to scale. It has a higher price point, which comes with key benefits. Sprout Social sets itself apart by helping your brand grow with more advanced discovery options, helping you find people to connect with in your industry. It also offers great analytics reporting.12
Sendible. Sendible is most popular with agencies who manage multiple accounts.13 They have smaller plan options available for solopreneurs and small businesses, but their strength is servicing companies with multiple brands and many accounts.
Remember that all of these tools can help with the curation process. You can add in the relevant blogs in your niche and they will automatically show you the latest posts, so you can easily share them. This helps you avoid scouring the web every time you want to curate something.
Whichever tool you use, make sure it works for you and your team.
THE IMPORTANCE OF REGULARITY
One of the best ways to make sure your followers don’t forget about you on social media is to keep delivering content on a regular basis. (As we’ll explore, your specific posting schedule will vary.)
At the most basic level, this means that it’s not a good idea to leave your social media followers in the lurch by disappearing on them for days at a time. In the same way that you open up your local newspaper or online news app every morning, your followers want to be able to turn to you with regularity to know what’s going on in your world. No matter what the schedule is, keeping it regular allows them to count on you.
An ongoing feature can also be a good way to expand upon this practice.
Years before live video, charity: water, a nonprofit organization, had a regular “photo of the day” feature on Twitter where they posted one wonderful image of their work in the field on a daily basis. This worked from a few different perspectives. For followers, it gave them something to look forward to every day. For @charitywater, it was highly engaging evergreen content they could schedule out far in advance. The concept was so popular that other accounts followed their lead.
These days, many social media followers think of live video in a similar way.
When I was a kid, TGIF came on every Friday night at 8:00 p.m. on ABC. Coming home from school on Friday afternoon, I always looked forward to Urkel’s latest antics on Family Matters. Social media works in the same way. These days, I know that life coach Mary Hyatt (who I’ll tell you more about later) comes out with her inspirational YouTube Live show every Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. central standard time. Women like me can plan for it, look forward to it, and tune in.
YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULE AND YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA EDITORIAL CALENDAR
With all of this in mind, now’s the time to come up with a social media calendar for each of your priority social media accounts. (Take the Social Media Brand Evaluation in appendix 2 to determine your priority platforms.)
A social media calendar will allow you to schedule posts in advance and know when it’s time for spontaneous posting. It will also ensure that you are balancing out your social media budget on each priority account with the different types of content deposits and withdrawals to keep followers highly engaged and keep your social media bank account in the black.
Here are a few examples of potential calendars that could work depending on your specific priority social media platforms:
Keep in mind that your usage (heavy user, moderate user, light user) is entirely dependent on your brand’s bandwidth. If you have a full-time social media manager, you will be able to take on significantly more posting than a one-woman-shop. Think about what you can realistically commit to.
Remember the 80/20 rule. You want 80 percent of the content to be a deposit that opens the story gap. Then 20 percent of the content is a withdrawal that closes the story gap and brings your follower onto or up the engagement ladder with a call to action.
For example, the social media schedule and bank account of a moderate user might look like this:
Then you’d look at your social media budget to determine how these withdrawals and deposits break down in terms of your different content envelopes.
This is all about your BrandScript.
Let’s say based on the character in your BrandScript that you decide your main content envelopes will be curated articles, quotations, images, and videos. (Selfies and statistics aren’t relevant to your brand, you decide.)
If you decide to divide these more or less evenly between the four content envelopes, your social media budget might look like this:
When it comes to your withdrawals, remember that those are direct calls to action or transitional calls to action to close the story gap and move people up the engagement ladder. How you format these withdrawals—in a video, a testimonial, a selfie, or an image—should also vary to some extent, although your main goal is to figure out what type of calls to action work best with your followers and use those more often over time.
For example, if I try a few formats of calls to action and realize that my followers respond best to selfies and testimonials, then my schedule could look like this:
Planning out the exact posts that will go in these slots (and allowing some breathing room for spontaneous posting) will be the next step. This is called building your social media editorial calendar.
Remember that you will be using similar versions of content on all platforms. For example, if you post a great article on Facebook, you would also post it to Twitter. With or without the same headline.
You will make changes over time as you get more information about what works and what doesn’t for your followers. We’ll look at how analytics can help you with this later, but in summary, over time you may see that you need to try different content developments, and you may need to try a different breakdown of your budgets.
Continuing with our above example, let’s say based on the character in your BrandScript that you decide your main content envelopes for your social media budget on Facebook, your priority platform, are curated articles, quotations, images, and videos. (You initially think selfies and statistics aren’t relevant to your brand.) One day, however, you are surprised to see a competitor using a selfie and getting some great responses. You decide to try it for yourself, and the analytics show that it does get great engagement with your followers. This conclusion might mean it’s time to try selfies as a new content envelope—either in addition to the other four envelopes you already have or as a replacement for an existing one that doesn’t seem to be working well. (You aren’t getting many clicks on any of your curated articles, after all.)
By the same token, let’s say you initially decided to divide your social media budget equally among your various content envelopes. When you see that images do so well, though, you decide to make this content envelope take up a larger share of your posting.
This is the type of tweaking you will do over time.
Finally, remember that you will see differences from platform to platform. In the same example, in the social media budget for your priority social media platform, Facebook, you decided your content envelopes were curated articles, quotations, images, and videos. On Instagram, your second priority social media platform, articles aren’t user-friendly. So on Instagram your social media budget could break down differently into these content envelopes: quotations, images, and videos.
Setting up your marketing schedule and editorial calendar for your priority platforms is a lot of work, but the wonderful thing is that once you have it up and running, you can maintain it with far less work than you likely spend on your social media posting today. Most importantly, you’ll finally have a social media marketing system that sells.
THE KINGS OF MARKETING KNOW HOW TO USE PATTERN DISRUPTION
Ten years ago, when my husband and I were first dating, and I still ate gluten, there was a bakery called Bell’Aria that played a key role in our lives here in Buenos Aires. The croissants were to die for, and I knew a certain someone named Claire who would buy a dozen in the morning and then come back later in the afternoon for a dozen more.
Bell’Aria’s marketing, however, left something to be desired. In fact, we used to laugh that they were “The Kings of Marketing” for what we deemed to be a marketing promotion that could only have been developed by an insane person.
Here’s how the promotion worked:
It was called “Bell’Aria Hour” (it sounds better in Spanish), and the idea was that at totally random times during the week there was a sixty-minute period wherein all customers would get an extra box of croissants with their purchase. There was no rhyme or reason to the schedule, and walking in the door, you never knew whether or not the free croissants would rain down.
This is crazy! We’d laugh. How is this effective marketing?! You never know when it’s going to be! And then we’d scurry back to the shop for more, on the off chance we might be lucky.
Recently, we were reminiscing about Bell’Aria and their insane marketing promotion.
“The thing is, they really did have the best croissants in the city,” my husband said. “Yeah, and the whole promotional hour really did make us go back a lot . . .”
We looked at each other sheepishly. Were the Kings of Marketing really insane marketing geniuses?
I’ll let you be the judge.
When it comes to social media, regularity only gets you halfway to the finish line. Doing something unplanned and creating a pattern disruption is also critical to keeping followers on their toes. In this day and age, we are so interested in unexpected happenings online that sometimes it seems that 90 percent of all celebrity-related headlines (not a verified number) have to do with a celebrity doing something unexpected on social media (unfollowing someone they are supposedly married to, deleting their account, posting a scandalously naked bathroom selfie, etc.).
Instagram Live video is a great example of this.
We spend almost an hour a day on Instagram, and one of the reasons is live video.14
Depending on the number of people you follow and the amount of time you spend on the platform, when you log onto Instagram to view the latest images and stories, you are also likely to see that someone you follow is also live at that very moment. This increases the time you spend on that platform and makes it more likely that you’ll come back soon to repeat the cycle. That’s good for Instagram, good for the person you follow, and good for you (providing it is valuable content).
This also works for other types of content.
Bestselling author Jen Hatmaker is known for her random tweet-storms of both highbrow and lowbrow television experiences. She’ll get on a tear and won’t get off until her followers are rolling on the floor, as she did when discussing Olympian swimmer Ryan Lochte’s hair during her Rio Olympics live-tweeting:15
@jenhatmaker
I went to my prayer closet over Ryan’s hair. I lit a candle & interceded. Fix it, Jesus. Give us strength. Give a light unto our path. #Rio
@krby0404
Replying to @jenhatmaker
Jen, I seriously can’t with your Rio commentary. Im just sitting at my desk snickering. Please never stop tweeting the Olympics
@jen4redemption
Replying to @jenhatmaker
I can’t even! #fixitjesus
It may not be live video, but it is just as effective in increasing the time her followers stay on Twitter and in making it more likely that they’ll come back for more Jen, more of the time. Good for Twitter, good for Jen, and good for her followers.
Now if only Jen could tweet me some flaky croissants.
POST LESS OFTEN, TAKE A SOCIAL MEDIA BREAK, CHANGE YOUR PLATFORM OF CHOICE, OR DECLARE SOCIAL MEDIA BANKRUPTCY
Pattern disruption can be so effective that it can make posting less often work to your advantage.
Although social media followers in general don’t respond well to the complete disappearance of someone they follow when it’s for no particular reason, life happens. When I gave birth to premature twins and spent almost two months hanging out with them in the hospital, social media was understandably not my top priority.
The result?
Whenever I did post, my engagement was through the roof. Like when I posted this after weeks offline.16
Purposely going offline for a period of time can have a similar effect.
Some years ago, I felt my Twitter life was getting out of control. At one point I thought that following less than one hundred people was a good rule of thumb for me. My rationale was that at this number I could realistically know what my followers are doing. Over the years my resolve had softened, and I was following more than seven hundred smart, lame, hysterical, annoying people. I tried to edit my list down. I’d unfollow ten people and then feel FOMO and follow them all over again. I clearly needed to do something more drastic, especially when I realized that I was ignoring my main timeline. So I did. In one fell swoop, I unfollowed everyone and declared Twitter bankruptcy.
The result was beneficial in a variety of ways.
First, it made me excited about Twitter again. After a couple days of following no one, I began to see things with new eyes. I reminded myself of all the awesome people and accounts that were right in front of me, and I made sure to add those back into my life. It also helped me stand out to some of my followers who had forgotten about me because of the seven hundred other people they follow. I did something jarring and newsworthy and they took notice. Finally, it convinced me of the power of more regular break-taking. For me, and for my followers.
Last year I took a complete twenty-one-day digital detox. No email, no internet, no social media. It was a great experience on a personal level, but it once again proved useful for my social media following. The posts I made when I came back online were some of my most engaged posts in ages. The reason? I had shaken things up by going offline, and then had shaken them up again by coming back on.
Mary Hyatt saw the same thing when she switched her social media platform of choice. She used to have a popular Instagram account sharing inspiration with women. When she quit Instagram and Facebook and stopped posting entirely on those platforms, her followers took notice. Thankfully for us, she didn’t go away completely. Instead, she decided to move her online activity to YouTube. We went with her, more eager than ever because she’d made us hungry for content in her absence.
Another gold star for the power of shaking things up. At the end of the day, using social media well doesn’t require you to hardwire yourself into one platform day in and day out. With the SHARE model, how you win is with strategy and spontaneity in equal measure.
The SHARE Model for Social Media Success for Every Brand
HOW
Learn the practical logistics of how to post your content.
Remember:
• Take the Social Media Brand Evaluation to determine your brand’s priority social media platforms (see appendix 2). Concentrate on the platforms that matter most to your brand.
• To decide how many accounts you need on each platform, remember that the fewer accounts you have, the better.
• Who posts matters less than you think. When to post matters more. Time of day, day of the week, and season of the year are all considerations.
• Third-party tools can help with scheduling, curating, and analytics. Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social, and Sendible are all good platforms that offer different benefits.
• Consistency is important. Ensure that you create a social media schedule and social media editorial calendar that work for your audience and your brand’s bandwidth.
• Use pattern disruption and selective break-taking to your advantage.
If you learn better by video, access a free five-video minicourse at SocialMediaMadeSimple.com.