The Ultimate Project Management Tool
One of the things that always seems to plague anyone who jumps into a social media campaign or strategy is the first few weeks of the campaign are full of newness and wonder and excitement, and then things begin to hit a wall. Your blog postings are not as regular and not as well thought out. You seem to have lost all momentum with growing your Facebook fans and your Twitter stream goes dormant. This is a classic example and if I am talking about you and your company, don’t feel that you may be the only person suffering from this social media syndrome. We professionals have the same issues on nearly every campaign we launch for individuals and companies. This is where a project management tool can prove invaluable to your needs.
I use a number of tools for my own projects and my clients, many of whom have their own additional in-house tools to help them track advertising, marketing and public relations initiatives. I particularly like the people at 37 Signals and their Basecamp software. It’s a great project management offering that tracks and manages your strategy of using social media. I think it could benefit many companies. Yo
u can begin an editorial calendar, set out a monthly message you want to produce, and you can even track what you have done and get a sense of what has worked and what was not successful.
If you don’t have a project management tool, my advice is to start small with a list on a legal pad. Years of working in the legal field taught me to always keep a pad next to me so I can track conversations, make notes, jot down ideas, and plan out strategies that come to me. I even have that legal pad next to my bed so when I wake up at 2:00 a.
m with that special idea to write a blog post about how to manage social media, I can write it down before I fall back asleep. I often get some of my best blogging fodder from a note that I write while on the phone, or even when I think of something in the shower. They actually sell notepads for that as well.
If you have already purchased a project management software system be sure to take advantage of all its tools for planning your social media strategy and tracking your progress and results. If you are like some and only have that pad of paper on the night stand, use it as well and I can assure you when you are staring at the computer screen, depressed you have nothing in the well, you’ll be able to look over to that pad of paper and get your inspiration.
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Tags: Advertising, blogging, Facebook, marketing, PR, Project Management, social media tools, Social Medias, Twitter
Why choose? I use project management tools that I access from my iPhone and computer browser, but I still carry pen and paper. For me, it is a Moleskine notebook instead of a legal pad, but its the same principle.
I may have Evernote on my iPhone, but it is still easier to scratch down some notes on paper in the middle of the night than to capture an idea on a PDA in the haze of near-sleep.
Yes Paul and a moleskin seems so much more affordable than the iPad!