Managing Your Social Media Accounts
These past three months, I’ve been doing a little project based on the help of Cath, here at WA. Back in December 2016, I wrote a blog post on WA describing how social media was stealing all of my valuable time. You can read the post here.
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/ashleyfisher/blog/social-media-is-a-time-stealer
Back then, I only had an Instagram account and a Twitter account and it was taking hours upon hours nearly every day to return likes to everyone who had liked my photos and to follow-up with everyone. I could not possibly even manage any other social media platforms and couldn’t even understand how other people were managing juggling all of their accounts.
Well, Cath left a little commentary on my blog with her secret to success. It’s called the 555 method. After the little experiment I conducted, I swear by it and it’s become my model for all other platforms. (I’ll get to that in a minute). Her method can be found here.
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/instagram-3-followers-and-following
I would encourage you to watch the Instagram series for additional information on how to manage your account as the link above is specific for how to spend your time managing the likes and follows.
Before I started my little experiment, I took a photo of what my Instagram account looked like so I could go back and have some sort of idea of where I was and how things changed if the experiment worked.
Here is the photo. Notice the amount of followers and those I was following. It’s well out of proportion and therefore I was spending valuable time on people who weren’t even following back.
Now, three months later, here is the photo I took yesterday. It’s a lot more in range with the amount of followers and those I follow. Also, look at the increase in followers.
The three months prior to that I barely had an increase of 50 followers and now over this last three month period my increase is significant.
So, I’ve increased my following and did the necessary cleaning up of who I was following. More importantly, I did this with applying the 555 method and spending only a fraction of my day on my social media platforms. Conclusion- The experiment worked! Now mind you, my account didn’t grow in leaps and bounds by the tens of thousands, but I was able to see a good growth amount with less work than what I was previously doing.
At the same time I did this experiment with Instagram, I also applied it to Twitter. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a photo of my Twitter account beforehand and now I wish I would have because by applying this same 555 methodology, my Twitter followers double over the same three month period. Score!
And guess what, I was able to branch out across all platforms thanks to the time I have been saving. I now have a Google Plus account, a Pinterest account and a Facebook Business page (that I just set up this week). I’ve found that if I use the 555 method across all platforms, then I am able to actually manage all accounts in less time than it was taking just for Instagram and Twitter! It’s also provided time for me to work more on my website in order to get that going and to learn the ropes.
I definitely consider these past three months a success. Even though I am not yet monetizing this success, it’s still a success on the side of time management. No one wants to do things that waste time, even if social media is fun, keeping up with it can be draining and then you just start to get tired of it and it becomes more of a chore than fun.
My goals within the next 3 months is to acquire a larger audience share who will eventually become my customers. Within 6 months I would ideally like to be earning some good money from my site and business.
I really want to do a big shout out to Cath and say thank you so much for helping me! I could not have done it without your reply to my last blog post. If those of you on WA are not yet following Cath, here is her WA profile: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/cathh1
Besides the Instagram tutorials she’s just completed one for Twitter, so go check it out.
All the best and happy social media-ing!
Ashley
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This is great, Ashley. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed with keeping up with social media and finding time to create new content for my website. I'm so glad that you shared this awesome information. I'm going to start the 555 system right away.
Thanks for sharing. :)
Laurie
Hi Laurie!
I'm so glad you found it helpful. I was so happy when Cath told me about it. It's made a world of difference for me! Once you've been doing it for a while, please let me now if it's help! I'm curious to see how well it works for others.
BTW- sorry for the very late response. I've been away visiting customers this week for my corporate American job. It has left no room for me to do this other fun stuff!
Happy weekend!
Ashley
Thanks, Ashley.
I will let you know how it goes. I do have one question, do you only follow those who follow you first on the social media? I find that I follow more people, than people are following me.
You enjoy your weekend too!!
Laurie :)
Hi Laurie,
I have two apps on my phone (you might be able to get them for desktop, also, but not sure). One is called Crowdfire and the other is called Followers +. Both the versions I have are free. Crowdfire I have for Twitter and Followers + I have for Instagram.
I use these two apps to keep track of who follows and unfollows me. I only follow people who follow back. A few time a week I will search out accounts that I would like follow. If after about 1 week, if they haven't followed back, then I unfollow them. I nearly always follow someone who follows me first (unless their entire social media pages is a bunch of jibberish or full of selfies--those I don't follow).
If someone follows me, then I follow them, and then they unfollow me, then I will unfollow them right back.
I have a super, pet-peeve about that because there are just way too many accounts out there that follow just so they can unfollow when you follow them back. I hate that and I NEVER follow just to unfollow. Personally, I would rather have someone follow, but not like or comment on my stuff, than follow to unfollow.
If you don't have a program that keeps track of this for you, then please get one. I've noticed that if you follow a lot more people than follow you, it somehow messes with your number of potential followers and ends up not doing you any good.
Get a program and right away go through and unfollow anyone who doesn't follow you. Besides, they don't see your posts anyway so why bother seeing theirs!
It's of course okay to follow more people than who follow you, but it's better to not be a large amount between those two numbers.
Hope that helps!
Happy Sunday :)
Ashley
AWESOME!! Thanks so much for the excellent explanation and tips on social media management programs. I will definitely look into it.
Laurie :)