Weeks ago when everything went south, many small businesses had to reduce expenses.  This may have meant letting go of whoever was maintaining your social media presence. If you are feeling like a deer in the headlights, you're not alone. In an effort to help those less social-media-savvy, our Senior Digital Designer and Strategist, Nicole Lariosa, has some words of advice to simplify things. This week she guides you on organic social media. Next week she'll simplify PAID social media.

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Part 1: Handling Organic Social Media (the free kind)

Part 2 to come next week!

Before you start, a few logistics items:

• Create a list of channels that your company is active on
• Are you doing organic social media (anything that happens on social media without paid promotion), paid social media (social media content that is part of a paid promotion) or both?
• Confirm that you are an admin on the pages/accounts or that you have credentials to access the different accounts
• Decide on who and how your company is going to respond and handle comments on posts
• Set Goals. Since you're taking over social media responsibilities, your goals might be to keep engagement levels from dropping. If you are social media fluent and taking over, your goals might be to grow your audience, increase engagement and drive conversions.

Review Social Media Documents

If you had a partnership with a social media company, social media content creator or a dedicated in-house social media manager, the chances are that you have some material to reference that will help you create content and schedule posts. These documents are going to be extremely helpful in guiding the content you'll be generating and the frequency of posting. Review these documents to get better acquainted with the various channels and their tone, voice, imagery, content and post schedule.

Generating Content

Take a look through past posts to familiarize yourself with your company's social media presence. You don't want to change the voice of your posts drastically. If the tone is very professional, and you come in with slapstick humor, your followers will notice the difference. It can be jolting to your followers if they are expecting Christiane Amanpour and get Will Ferrell. If you want to introduce something different, do it gradually.

Different channels may require different content. Facebook's audience is inherently older and casual. Instagram is all about strong visuals. Twitter is a fast scroll with tidbits of information and LinkedIn is professional.

If you aren't personally active on social media, do some research, look at what your competitors are doing on social media and take some time to familiarize yourself with the different channels.

TIP: Most importantly, make your content authentic. On social media, you're talking with your audience, not at them.

How often should I post?

We're only going to give you numbers on four of the major channels. Posting frequency can and does vary depending on your audience, the number of followers and business type. If you do some research, you'll find that the majority of reference sites can agree that once a day is sufficient for most businesses.

Facebook

• Minimum = 3x a week
• Suggested = 1x a day
• High = 2x a day

Instagram

• Minimum = 1x a day
• Suggested = 1 – 2x a day
• High = 3x a day

LinkedIn

• Minimum = 2x a week
• Suggested = 3x a week or every business day
• High = 2x a day

Twitter

• Suggested = 3x a day to 30x a day
• The lifespan of a tweet is pretty short, so when you post, spread them out.

TIP: Concentrate on producing quality content and gradually acclimate to the new role until you can post quality content at least 3x a week. It's better to post quality content at minimum intervals than to publish irrelevant filler content at more frequent intervals. It is also helpful to plan your content ahead of time when possible. This allows you to put some thought into it versus just throwing something out there.

Reviewing Engagement

Make sure you're keeping an eye on your Page and Post Insight data to gauge what's working the best for you. Insights can give you information on your audience, their locations, reach, likes and followers.

Once you feel like you have a handle on your social media, don't be afraid to let these insights guide you in experimenting with some different things.

TIP: Reviewing this data can be extremely helpful in making decisions. The Insight data can redefine your audience, discover an audience that needs nurturing and shape the type of content you generate.

Remember to cut yourself some slack. You've just inherited additional responsibilities. You aren't a social media expert, yet. Chances are you're doing this job and at least three others. With a little bit of time, research and experience, you might just find that you like social media management.