Social media is a phenomenal tool for people and businesses alike. With so many options to choose from, it’s possible for almost anyone to build a vibrant network and credible online presence.

However,there are so many outlets to use, and this makes staying on top of that extended network a hectic process. These tips will help you create a strategy to effectively manage your presence across the social space.

1. Define Your Social Purpose

Every organization is indulging in social media for one reason or another. For you, it could be for one of the following reasons:

  • Increasing brand awareness
  • Boosting engagement
  • Strengthening customer relationships
  • Driving sales and revenue

Never underestimate the importance of defining your goals before diving into the murky social waters. Not only is this critical for laying the foundation that will help you accomplish those goals, it gives you something to measure when it comes time to size up the results.

2. Plan Around Your Audience

Keeping your social media efforts organized is fairly easy when you align them with the needs of your audience. You want to approach your fans and followers with a strategy that encourages them to engage in dialogue, share content, become an advocate for your brand or all the above.

Simply realizing that your audience should be the bulk of your focus will make it easier to stay on track.

3. Target Your Relationships

Some users are out to build the biggest social following they possibly can. That works for a few, but if you’re a professional, you want to keep your friend building initiatives limited to people who actually offer value to your network, opposed to random strangers. More often than not, it’s a classic case of quality of over quantity.

4. Schedule Content Launches

Content is king — even in the social arena. It is so important in this landscape that you should actually plan out your content creation moves. What type of content is going to represent your brand? Will it primarily be witty text-based updates? Or will you leverage a mix of text, photos and video posts?

Whatever you come up with, be sure to add it to a content editorial calendar so you can keep the information flowing with consistency. These days, social media is as mobile as you are. It’s there when you crank up the old desktop in the morning, and can even travel on your BlackBerry Q10 when you need to hit the road.

This should make it extremely easy to stay on your deadlines when scheduling content launches.

5. Centralize Distribution

If you are on multiple social networks, you may find it difficult to keep up with all of them. Luckily there are tools such as HootSuite available. HootSuite is a service that lets you manage all your social media accounts from a centralized dashboard. Once logged in, you can send out posts, schedule posts in advance, and handle various other management tasks in streamlined fashion. These tools can help you save a lot of time and simply make life in the social space much easier.

The better you organize it, the easier that social presence will be to manage, no matter where you dwell.