8 Time Saving Social Media Tools For A Product Launch

Guest post By Jen Havice

Whether you are launching a new product or a service online, being efficient with your time and resources are a must. There’s so much to do and inevitably not enough hours in the day to get things done. Using social media to work for you is the key.

Have Your Ducks In A Row Ahead Of Time

Get your systems in place and tested well before your launch date. Chances are you might end up feeling a bit overwhelmed no matter how well you’ve planned things out. If you’re scrambling just to keep up with your regular influx of emails, think about how stressed out you’ll be remaining full steam ahead when it’s crunch time.

  • Get familiar with a management system such as Hootsuite. It allows you to post across several different social media channels from one hub. It’s free up to five profiles. The best part is that you can pre-schedule to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ along with a few others. Plus, it’s an easy way to look at several profiles quickly to see who has been sharing your content and interacting with you.

  • Think about implementing a way to organize the content for your blog. A launch is not the time to abandon adding fresh content to your site. If you have a WordPress website, installing plugins that keep content writing on task can be a lifesaver. There is the Cleverness To Do List plugin which allows for the creation of an internal To Do list that can be shared between multiple users. The WP Editorial Calendar plugin provides a post overview of your blog with the ability to drag and drop pending posts to different dates. This makes it a lot easier to know where the content holes are by the week and month.

Be Interactive Not Reactive

Knowing what people are saying about you and your products are a good idea at all times. During a launch, it’s a critical time to engage with your target market by responding to questions or comments made via social media.

  • Whether it’s launch time or not, having search queries set up on Google Alerts makes good business sense. Google Alerts allow you to monitor the Internet to see who and what is being said about you, your product, service or competitors. Depending on your need, you can receive an email immediately, once a day or once a week.

  • Mention.net works in a similar way to Google Alerts but seems to be far more powerful. It does a far better job of finding mentions across the social media platforms and you can look at all your mentions in one place. It’s free for up to 3 alerts and 500 mentions per month.

Keep The Content Stream Alive

Encouraging the people buying your product to share your message and help promote you never should leave your radar screen. With everything else that needs to be managed it can be tough not only to come up with snippets of great shareable content but ways of getting others to do it for you.

  • Click To Tweet is a handy little tool that generates a custom link of whatever tweet you want to create. When someone clicks on the link, the message automatically gets added to that person’s Twitter status box. Basically, it creates a ready made retweet of whatever you want shared.

  • Graphics are always a great way of getting attention. Between Facebook and Pinterest, image quotes have become one of the most shareable pieces of content. However, spending any significant amount of time putting them together rarely makes much sense. Using either Quozio or Recite This makes short order of creating this kind of content. Quozio has a bookmarklet that when clicked will bring up a box on top of whatever web page you are looking at. This makes it extremely easy to highlight and paste whatever you want.

  • Quozio.com

    You don’t need to be everywhere at once. Be where your customers are and make your message count.@jenhavice http://bit.ly/12g5r2u    Click to Tweet

Give some of these a try and see what works for you. They may help implementing a launch a little less daunting and a whole lot more enjoyable.

jenJen Havice is a forty-something blogger, writer, and social media consultant. When not helping small businesses navigate the social networking jungle or writing commentary for her humor blog, she chases after two large dogs and rides an even larger horse. She and her husband call Minneapolis home.

 

 

 
TechTrainingVault

Top 3 Myths About Creating Systems For Your Business

Guest post By Natasha Vorompiova

MYTH—Systems are only for big established businesses.

FACT—Small businesses also need systems.

One of the main reasons we start our own businesses is to experience more freedom—freedom to be in charge of our schedule, go at our own pace and not have anyone boss us around.  However, we often become slaves to our mounting to-do list, which seem impossible to manage.

Systems allow us to reclaim that freedom.  They take the guesswork out of what needs to be done and how to go about doing it.  Overwhelm and burnout become things of the past.  A flawless flow becomes your reality.

MYTH—Systems constrain creativity.
FACT—Systems nurture creativity.

So many of us mistakenly believe that systems force us into small boxes, prevent our creative juices from flowing, or block our ability to perform in innovative ways.

The reality is that there’s very little room for creativity when you’re constantly interrupted by incoming email, panicking about missing a deadline, or freaking out when you forget key details about a proposal you sent to a client.

Systems give us the mental and physical space we need in order to get into our “zone of genius” and create.  They bring us sanity.  They allow us to breath.  They free up our time.

MYTH—Systems are a waste of time.
FACT—Systems eliminate waste.

Creating systems is an art more than a science.  It takes time to design ones that work best for our own business.  Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs think it’s a waste of time to concentrate on developing them because they don’t see a direct correlation between systems and business revenues.

When we start a business, all our efforts go towards generating profits, so we tend to concentrate exclusively on bringing in more clients and servicing them.

What is not visible to the naked eye is how much we waste by not having systems in place.  Spending 30 minutes looking for misplaced passwords, website addresses or old client proposals adds up to 3 hours at the end of the week, 168 hours by the end of the year and nearly $17,000 if your hourly rate is $100/hour.

You can also lose customers due to missed messages in piles of unread e-mails, unsuccessful product offerings due to neglected testimonials, or failed launches due to poor planning.

 Your turn:

Leave a comment below and share what type of system you can implement in your business right now to help you save time and money.

Natasha was the winner of the Thrive Hive Operation: Opt-in Challenge. If you haven’t already be sure to check out and opt-in to her offering over at SystemsRock.

About Natasha aka SystemsChick

Natasha Vorompiova is the founder of Systems Rock where she breaks the stereotype that systems are just for big enterprises and put damaging constraints on creative spirits. Her unique approach nourishes the creativity of entrepreneurs while helping them establish the essential foundational systems that will enable their businesses to truly flourish. Grab your FREE copy of ‘Systems Chick’s Guide to Transforming Busyness Into Business’ at SystemsRock.

 

250x250TechTrainingVault