My Social Media Strategy for 2016: Take Social Media damn seriously and still have fun using them




Greater than 6 minutes, my friend!

Belated happy new year everyone!

I’ve been quiet recently as I’ve been busy attending crazy translators’ gatherings and… doing things like, you know, business plan for the new year. Don’t worry I’m not going to bore you my New Year New Me Bullshit. But there’s one part of my planning I can’t help but share with you, as it might give some inspiration:

My Social Media Strategy.

This year I’m going to take Social Media damn seriously and still have a lot of fun using them.

Why does this play such a role in my planning? Last year I became more active on a few social media platforms and I found out how powerful these tools can be when it comes to increasing your visibility and expert status. On top of this, most of them are free of charge and can be fun too! These are only a few of the reasons why you may want to include social media marketing in your marketing mix. On the other hand, time is money. Each minute spent on social media is lost for something else. That’s why it is important to use them efficiently and try not to get addicted to them.

But let’s get to the point, my strategy. For each social media platform I’m active on I’ve defined one or two main objectives, according to the different target groups and what I’ve observed last year.

Twitter

Twitter is my favourite social media platform. I love the interactions going on out there and sharing ideas and inspiring content with fellow linguists. Recently I found out that Twitter allows me not only to connect to my dear colleagues all over the world, but also to extend my reach and visibility to prospect clients: a few of them started following me and interacting with me. My plan now is to apply what proved to work in my fellow translators community on Twitter, to reach prospect clients. My main objectives are:

  1. Nearly double my translators community
  2. Open a new account which I only use to connect with end-clients.

As to point 1, I tried to answer these questions:

How many followers do I want to reach? 2,500 wouldn’t be bad. That is 1.000 more than I have now…which is quite ambitious for a year, but hey, weren’t we going to dream big in 2016? Joking aside, I have a plan. Keep on reading.

How often am I going to tweet? I realized that I lose followers, as soon as I start tweeting to much (let’s say more than 10-15 tweets per day) or too little (less than 2-3 tweets). That’s why I will try to keep my tweeting frequency between 5 and 10 tweets a day.

What am I going to tweet about? One “advertising” tweet per day, i. e. something regarding me and my business, like this Open Mic story, an article from my blog, or my latest website update. The rest will be interesting articles written by top influencers in the language industry as well as other freelancers, bloggers etc., that provide an added value to my followers community. 2-3 Tweets per day will be interactions, such as replying to comments and retweeting current news.

How much time am I going to spend on it? I’m going to spend an hour every weekend scheduling tweets for the whole week. To make this process more efficient I will keep a list of blogs and platforms – The Open Mic is on top of it! – that publish fresh, high quality “tweetable” content on a regular basis. During the week I’m going to spend about 15 minutes a day retweeting interesting content and reacting to interactions.

As to my 2nd point I’m going to open a new account where I apply what I’ve learned in 3 years of tweeting for the translators community to reaching new end-clients. One tweet per day will be what I call an “advertising” tweet. Beside that I’m going to send out a couple of tweets per day about the areas I specialize in, as well as tips for translation buyers. Tweets will be scheduled in the weekend. I will follow my potential clients, interact with them and share content that provides an added value to their community.

Facebook

I’m not really active on FB, as I’ve never been keen on posting what I had for lunch or bought on my last shopping trip. However, I recently found out that Facebook is being used increasingly often by the translators community to exchange ideas, ask questions and post job enquiries. I have been more than once recommended by a colleague for a job on FB.

As to the strategy, I’ve defined two different objectives for my private account and my business page:

  1. Private account: increase my visibility in the translators community by providing an added valuue
  2. Business page: Promote my brand

As to point 1, I tried to answer these questions:

What am I going to post? I will try to answer as many questions from fellow translators as possible and recommend colleagues for translation jobs, according to the “Give Before You Take” principle.

How often am I going to post? I will take a break twice a day (not more than that, as I also need to get some work done!) to check what’s going on on Facebook

Point 2:

How many likers do I want to reach? About 400, including colleagues, prospects and other valuable contacts.

How often am I going to post? At least once a day.

What am I going to post? The main focus here will be on me and my brand. I might share pictures of me at interpreting assignments or attending a CPD event, as well as my blog posts. Of course not all posts will be self-advertising. I will make sure I post plenty of interesting articles written by other influencers. I might also step out of my comfort zone and interact with prospects, liking and commenting on their updates using my business page.

XING

Xing is a business platform. It’s similar to LinkedIn, but with a strong focus on the German speaking countries, which is the market I’m targeting. Last year I was able to generate several leads on Xing and even get a few jobs.

My main objective: gain more leads and turn at least 2 or 3 of them into regular clients.

Here’s my to-do-list to reach this goal:

– Optimize my profile for the platform’s internal search engine, in order for my profile to appear on top of the results, whenever someone enters the keywords “Italian interpreter” or “Italian translator” in the search box.

– Use the advanced search function to look for prospects and send them well thought out contact requests. In fact I found out that the response rate on Xing is much higher than in mailing campaigns (which are of course also more expensive).

– Share news that could be interesting for my prospects a couple of times a week

– Connect with prospects and other contacts I meet at networking events

– Share news about my business on my business page

– Become more active in groups where my prospects (like PR and Marketeers) hang out

– Become more involved in a group I’m already moderating

-Search the page of the events I’m attending for interesting contacts and get in touch with them before the event

This is going to cost me up to 2 hours a week, but I feel it might be worth it.

 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has never been my business platform of choice, as my time is limited and I prefer to spend it on Xing. However, several translation buyers and other interesting leads connected with me on LinkedIn recently. While I think I will still be a rather passive user this year I will make a bigger effort to…

Make a good first impression on prospect clients and translation buyers that using LinkedIn.

In order to reach this goal I’m going to:

– Optimize my profile, including information about CPDs, projects, my USPs etc.

– Sign in to the platform each time the app on my mobile phone notifies me that I’ve got a message, as it might be from a prospect or another valuable contact

– Share a few of the posts I schedule for Twitter on LinkedIn too.

– Sign in a couple of times a week and take 10 minutes to like, comment or share my contacts’ updates

 

That’s all folks! What about you? What are your favourite social media platforms? Does Social Media Marketing play a big role in your marketing efforts? Feel free to share your ideas in a comment!

Caterina Saccani - Saccani Translations

About Caterina Saccani - Saccani Translations

Italian freelance Conference Interpreter & Translator, living and working in Belgium and Germany. Languages: Italian, German, English, Dutch

7 thoughts on “My Social Media Strategy for 2016: Take Social Media damn seriously and still have fun using them

  1. Hi Caterina, nice post! It reminds me that I ought to take my social media channels more seriously. I also find Twitter to be a great resource for connecting with clients and sharing interesting content, so instead of dabbling, I’ll devote more attention to that than I have been doing so far. Thanks for also reminding me about Xing! I have neglected my profile there – which is silly as my target market is also the German-speaking region!
    Cheers!

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  2. Nice post Caterina, thanks for sharing! Since I started to implement my Twitter strategy I’ve seen great results, I’ve met a great number of lovely colleagues and even got jobs. Good luck with your new social strategy 🙂

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  3. Hi Caterina,
    Very helpful, many thanks for sharing! I have no interest for social media, though I know I should. I’m not really active on LinkedIn, and my Twitter account is… empty! My problem is that I don’t know how to use them, but thanks to you, I discovered what I can do with them!

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