Getting Social

You have a new community or startup or a product, whose social media you are supposed to take care of. Here is what you need to get started. 

• Create Twitter Handle, Facebook Page, Google+ Page and if any other social media you want to be on. There can be more to YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr and a long list. 
• To make handling the three basic accounts easy, create an account on Hootsuite or Buffer. There are other products too that can do this for you.

The basic rule of getting started is "Post at least 10-15 times, when you are new. Get attention."

Twitter : 

• Weekends (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) have seen most active participation. Stats say 17% higher engagement.
• Images are twice more engaging than just words. 
• Tweets with less than 100 characters, catch more attention.
• Tweets with links, catch attention.
• Use Hashtags. Keep it to maximum 3.
• #Too #many #hashtags #are #risky
• If you need or want to get retweets, mention that. 
• Writing RT gets RTs. Writing "Retweet" gets even more RTs. 
• Avoid tweeting during office hours. Use commute hours, general lunch hours or post dinner. 

Facebook : 

• Images in general get a lot of attention. 
• Use short posts to get your posts to be read. 
• Emoticons makes things personal.
• Ask questions to involve the audience. 
• Questions asked be like, effectiveness in decreasing order :
• Should
• Would
• Which
• Who
• When 
• What
• Where
• Why
• How
• In case of Facebook, Thursday and Friday see a good activity. 
• Contests and incentives based on contests get the users to interact. 

If you plan to learn more about using Social Media, a personal recommendation would be to follow the Hootsuite and Buffer blog.

Also Tumblr is a very good platform

Me? I am most social @DhatriMisra