Social Media Series: A basic guide to managing your online presence yourself, when there’s no budget to hire an expert

Whether you are a tech start up, a restaurant, NGO, music festival or a gym, you can manage your social media yourself. You may not be as efficient as an external agency, but there is plenty that you can do by yourself if your strapped for cash.

In this first article we will outline the contents of the future five pieces, to give you a framework to understand social media. Every 2 weeks we will release one of these chapters.

CONTENT FOR YOUR AUDIENCE: As Part 2 of 6 we will explore segregating, understanding and generating relevant content for you audience. We will look at what is the content that is most relevant to them and how do you combine self-promotion with a content stream that is of interest to your audience. Some audiences will require different timing and frequency than others. We will delve further into this on the 13^th of May, 2016, through examples across sectors. Naturally, we will be unable to cover all the sectors that may be relevant to all our readers. However we will try our best to use examples that may serve as stimulants for ideas across as many fields as possible.

TECHNOLOGY TO REACH YOUR AUDIENCE: Different platforms have different technological advantages. Some work with low broadband speeds while others almost entirely on high-speed broadbands. A focused YouTube strategy may not make sense for an audience that is operating mainly over mobile phones or from Tier 2 and 3 cities. Like with content, it is important to leverage technologies based on target audiences. Leverage different social media platforms to assist and boost each other. There is also technology out there that will help optimize your time, so that you can continue running your business and need not be constantly engaged with content generation. After all, Social Media is just one of many marketing activities that you must attend to, but it is possibly also the most time consuming. This article is scheduled for release on the 27^th of May, 2016.

STIMULATING USER-GENERATED CONTENT: It’s this step that primarily distinguishes social media from old-world media like Broadcast and Print. In this article we will discuss how we can aggregate content across platforms, ideas for contests, in-restaurant communications, designing hashtags, and even at the use of physical spaces to help your audience generate content foryou. Look out for this piece right here on Business Insider on the 10^th of June, 2016.

MULTIPLIERS: There are two ways to grow on social media—incrementally and exponentially. Your best shot at growing exponentially without spending on advertising, is by leveraging multipliers. On the 24^th of June, 2016, we will explore how regular people, mini-celebs, super celebs and old-world media can all be a boost to your social media presence. In this article you will learn to look for multipliers everywhere you look. Here is a primer in turning the spotlight on your own business’s relevant celebrities.

TRACKING IMPACT: And finally, to wrap up our 6-part series on the 8^th of July, 2016, we look at measuring your social media efforts. Marketing yourself on social media, like marketing in the physical world, involves some amount of experimentation with content and promotions. Measuring and understanding what is working and what is not is essential for a robust review process. A feedback loop will ensure that you keep improving as you move forward. In this final article we will guide you on measuring your own efforts and reading the numbers that are relevant to you.

Do comment below to let us know how you found this useful, and if you have feedback on topics that we may have missed, then please do let us know.

(Jacob Cherian is the Chief Ideas Officer at www.SocialMediaForRestaurants.IN and www.WindowsToNGOs.com)