Social Media Marketing:

Why (10 ÷ 4) × 7 Can Be Your Formula for Success

Social media marketing can be an important aspect of your foodservice business. In fact, if you want to increase traffic to your website and engage your customers with your brand, it needs to be. What it shouldn't do, though, is consume all your time.

As inbound marketing experts specializing in the foodservice equipment industry, we've come across two general ends of the spectrum in our experience. First, there are people who have no idea what social media is and why it can help their business, much less how to make that happen. Then there are people who are social media addicts. They're the ones who overuse it to the point of actually wasting time. In reality, most people are somewhere in between these two extremes.

Monitoring the Web: Divide 10 minutes of your time between the Big 4

Let's say you can spend ten minutes per day monitoring your accounts in order to maximize your social media marketing efforts. What is the best way to divide your time? What should you be doing? How can you use social media to grow your foodservice? Go minute by minute.

First Four Minutes – Start by checking your Twitter account. Look for engagement on both your company and your competition. To make it easy, try platforms like TweetDeck, Social Inbox, or you can bookmark your streams.

The Next Two Minutes – Open up Facebook and look for any private messages, reviews, or comments left on your wall. To save time, don't forget to bookmark your company's Facebook page in your browser.

The Next Two Minutes – Take advantage of this growing social media platform for professionals. Review your group digest and look at your company's page for recent feedback.

The Last Two Minutes – Yes, Google rewards companies that utilize Google platforms. Check your email for Google Alerts that mention your brand and/or industry through Google+, blogs, Quora, or any other sources.

What if you have more time? By adding just five minutes to the 10 minutes you spent monitoring your social media accounts, you can begin to react to some of the information you receive. If a tweet caught your interest, make note of it and reply. If someone raised an important question, take a few minutes to provide the solution. Instead of just listening, start engaging.

7 Days a Week

What can you do with even more resources? Before you start investing even more time and resources into social media marketing for your foodservice business, make sure you know what your goals and objectives are. Make sure they're measurable. After you've determined what you want to gain, then ask…

Do It Yourself or Hire a Pro?

For many companies who have the financial resources to fund additional staff members or have current staff with the time and right credentials, it probably makes sense to keep your social media marketing efforts internal. For others who are looking for cost-effective solutions that are part of a larger inbound marketing effort, an external consulting group might make sense.

Use Existing Staff

If you want to use your own people to run your social media marketing efforts, make sure they're properly trained. Download the free TMC PowerPoint presentation on How to Attract Customers with Facebook and learn the ins and outs of achieving your foodservice business objectives using one of the Big 4 social media platforms.