Three things I've learned about social media

1. Social media is immediate.

When I started with social media, it was quite a task convincing colleagues that a response didn't have to go through 12 revisions before it could be sent out. It didn't have to be seen by everyone in the organisation. And it didn't have to be word perfect, because chances are, I would edit it anyway.

Social media is about two-way communication and when someone addresses you, you should ensure that you respond, and quickly. There's nothing worse than finding an organisation on Twitter, asking them a question, and getting no response, or a worse, an "overdue" response.

A good way of ensuring that you respond quickly is to establish a good knowledge base. This can be in the form of documented FAQs and their answers that you can use as a reference when the queries start pouring in, or in the form of people who know the answers to commonly asked questions through years of experience.

2. Social media is 24/7.

According to research conducted in 2013 by World Wide Worx, the most popular time to tweet is 9-10pm. Not your usual working hours, you'll agree. Depending on your line of work, queries will come via social media at all hours of the day. Obviously, we can't all be up and working 24 hours a day, but having a policy in place that states what your response time is and sticking to it will go a long way to helping you retain your followers.

3. Managing an account requires thought and planning.

 I'll be honest: my husband thinks that the social media part of my job sounds like I do lots of nothing. It's not true, of course. Deciding to invest time in social media is not as simple as signing up for a Facebook account. Amongst other things, here are just some of the things I've done while managing social media accounts:

•  Deciding who my target audience is and whether a particular platform will reach them.
• Setting up a policy and ensuring that our organisation has a social media risk management strategy. 
• Setting up a posting schedule, to ensure that we post at the optimum time of day, and that we keep your account content "fresh". 

No, social media account management isn't playing all day. It requires thought and planning.

I'll share more lessons learned in future posts.