Senior Management Teams Can Hit the Ground Running with Social Media

April 19th marked the 114th Boston Marathon. Some may view social media as daunting as running a marathon, but there are ways to get started without feeling winded. Chances are that your competitors have already joined the social media race, so it is time you got started as well.

For the past few months I have been focusing the some of my time on social media and a content marketing strategy for Boston venture capital firm OpenView Venture Partners. Currently, we have a presence on several social sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Slideshare) in which we share the best new ideas to help senior management teams of expansion stage software and internet companies. I spend some time each week managing these sites, posting new content, and responding to comments.

Here are some tips to help you hit the ground running: (I promise, these tips won’t take as long as running a marathon)!

1. Write a blog post on a weekly basis at least. If you are able to commit to something more frequent, then go for it. The point is to being to offer valuable content to your target market and create a landing spot for all other social media.
2. Take 5 minutes each day to review what is being said about your company or brand on social media. Use a tool to monitor what is being said about your company and respond to positive and negative comments.
3. Follow the 411 rule (via TippingPoint Labs) for participating on Twitter. Specifically, post 4 new pieces of information, 1 retweet, and 1 promotional tweet. This will also help control the amount of time you spend on social media.
4. Create alerts using one of the many tools out there to track news in your industry and identify valuable content for sharing.
5. Set your limits. Pace yourself and only participate in the social media sites that make sense for you and your company.
6. Divide and conquer. Recruit someone else in the office to help.
7. Outsource content creation. There are tons of great content creators out there if you need more help. If you need help finding one, check out Junta42.