[Paul B]

I work for a small specialist engineering firm (we employ 6 or so people). Business development has seemingly never been needed as reputation is strong and it's within a niche field. However, currently things are looking a little different. The company has wanted to get a better handle on it's website and social media since I joined but TBH nobody has had the time (and perhaps the inclination); that's about to change as the construction industry slows down  .

We're not that interested in having every social media available but we're fairly keen on managing Wordpress (current website), LinkedIn (recently spruced but before that gathering dust) and likely twitter (hello world).

I thought there'd be an easy way to do this using RSS feeds but the more I look at it, things might be a bit messy (poorly formatted cross posts). Do UKB members have experience of how to manage this? Hootsuite looks to be the Gucci option but I'm always keen for an OpenSource (/cheap) alternative.

[steveri]

You might be fine with free Hootsuite with a limited account list and shared login? I'd maybe treat your website as the core offering and broadcast incoming links on twitter. Replicate/recast stuff on LinkedIn and send traffic to the web for anything longer. Tweetdeck is nice (and free) for monitoring twitter mentions, keywords, direct message etc. Tweetdeck does scheduling too so you can bank a few tweets for the future. Start small and keep it achievable?

[T_B]

I use free Hootsuite but only really because it’s useful for scheduling posts.

What SM platforms do others in your industry use? It’s useful to benchmark against your competitors as you could end up putting loads of effort into eg Twitter and seeing little growth/engagement/sales.

[Paul B]

I use free Hootsuite but only really because it’s useful for scheduling posts.

Am I being thick, I can only see free for 30-days?
https://signuptoday.hootsuite.com/pro-uk-branded/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=selfserve-bau-emea-en-ner-uk-pua-search-branded-exact&utm_term=hootsuite&gclid=CjwKCAjw95D0BRBFEiwAcO1KDJk_TEkKbJxHgNv6hozeGNwDUsNtE-G8A1RgXREMvoEwl-H_V5uVYRoCSVoQAvD_BwE

EDIT: Got it!

I'll have a look regarding others, essentially anything Civil Contractors use would be useful. LinkedIn is definitely the main one but there's definitely things floating  around on Twitter that are of use (both ways). It's not a real heart ache for me to look through a few things whilst drinking one of my many cups of tea. 

You might be fine with free Hootsuite with a limited account list and shared login?

Yes that's fine. We do similar for complex (read expensive) analysis packages. Scheduling is my main gripe looking at it. We've got a backlog of 'news' items (look at us, look at what we've done, aren't we awesome posts etc.) that I don't just want to splurge all at once. The way our work is as well, we're either feast or famine so it'd be better to schedule things in the quiet periods and have them manage themselves (in terms of posting) during the busier times.

EDIT: I forgot to say thanks. Thanks!

[tomtom]

I do a lot less of this now - but use tweet deck. Good for scheduling tweets. You can write one per day for the next week etx...

You can also get things to easily auto tweet the (shortened) content of a RSS feed (eg news from your website or maybe even LinkedIn (I dunno tho)).

Spend 5-10 min every day going through and RT’ing stuff that’s relevant for your company as well -!m and it’ll look like you’re active and engaged in the engineering community.

[steveri]

If you have a pile of news you want on the website you can draft that in advance and schedule publishing from WordPress. You can tweet from WP as another option?