Facebook, Yelp, YouTube, Twitter et al had been born as tools for interaction between individuals, mainly for fun. It soon dawned on everybody that they could be more than that. A myriad of possibilities opened up. Businesses saw a treasure trove in managing multiple social media to be used in many ways that were obvious. Innovations by some quick thinkers put the social media to uses unknown till then. The result is something that was waiting to happen: A collapse of the whole system.

Billions of interactive communications / noise

The behemoth is starting to find it hard to keep breathing. Billions of interactive communications comprising of chat, instant messages, tweets and texting between people and companies have started telling on the health of social media. A saturation point is fast approaching and unless a way is found to meet the challenge head-on, it could have some disastrous result which no one would want.

It is businesses, perhaps, that would bear the brunt more than individuals. The utility of the tentative original moniker ‘The Information Super Highway’ for the Internet has been realised a million times over and the world is under an information deluge. Twitter, for example, not without pride, says that a total of 110 million tweets are made on any given day. Unnecessary interruptions, a euphemism for workers straying into social media during office hours, in the opinion of the research company Basex, cause a loss of $650 billion in 2007 alone… and that was 5 years ago…!

In a realm that escalates by the day, we can only imagine what the actual figure should be today.

Multiple Social Media Accounts Equal What?

Companies who start with one social media network soon see the possibilities of their business growing manifold if they were to open multiple social media accounts in various other similar sites. Since the sum total is always arrived at by adding up parts, to have many parts is what everyone would think is prudent. Not always so… If all the parameters governing such a platform were to be equal, this could be a blanket decision in the case of all the companies. It can never be so easy. There are going to be different scales or at least glaring variations in the case of individual companies.

Human Resources Play an Important Role in Managing Multiple Social Media Accounts

All the aspects of managing multiple social media have to be taken into account before plunging headlong into umpteen social media groups expecting to do well in each of them. Human resources play an important role in managing multiple social media accounts. Financial conditions of the company would always have a crucial role to play. On the other hand, many businesses are content with having just one account in one platform which is not sufficient at all. Their not researching enough to realise the importance of managing multiple social media accounts makes them lose money which would have accrued to them, had they been prudent enough to it carry out.

It is perhaps human nature that the initial curiosity and eagerness wears off sooner than to be expected but many companies that start off with enthusiasm fail to manage multiple social media accounts. They either completely drop off or are not active enough to matter. New developments that are taking place in them give them a go by. (www.USAToday.com)

Another point made by social media exponent Christina Pappas (www.Zmags.com) is to employ a customised approach. A sort of compartmentalisation of uses in the case of each network: A different use for different networks. A tweet is necessarily different from what we would post on LinkedIn. While the latter leans more towards business, a Facebook Business Page, though it is of the same ilk, is not the same. It cannot all be same standard posts in all the cases. How then is to decide which platform is to be used for what purpose?

www.SocialMention.com is a website that offers some very useful ideas to put in practice. It lists which business is currently in vogue in social media networks. One can make up his mind on this by using Google Alerts too. A good businessman makes it a point to learn the competitors’ strategies and to counter them with his own. Traditional methods of accessing this information have their own place and they can not be done away with. Managing multiple social media can only be a worthy addition.

The most effective way to select the network is to find out which one that the customers seek out in order to get information and to concentrate on them. This is where managing multiple social media makes its entry. You can not very well manage all the accounts if you are short of manpower to monitor them. There is no point in biting more than you can chew. It is all very well to have many accounts but it will be a vain effort to have insipid and uninspiring content that would put off the visitors.

Managing Accounts Successfully: Vodafone UK

An active player who is managing multiple social media can see its business growing in a healthy and predictable way. Vodafone UK, to cite such a player, has garnered hundreds of thousands of fans across multiple social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube)and what is more, it has very well managed to keep the fans’ interests sustained. Customers’ feedback is given due importance and as a matter of routine, answered. The confidence with which the customers accept the company’s strategy and approach makes the company one of the most interactive entities to embrace social media.

A newspaper or a television advertisement can reach only so many of the targeted audience in specific fields of activity and no more. Social media, on the other hand, has the potential to reach millions of adherents instantly. The other great advantage is the facility to interact is completely absent in newspapers and television.

And finally…

Managing multiple social media enables the business to get the feedback to a certain degree of certainty. Those who read the contents in the social media announcements and advertisements can be expected to be prompted to record their reaction, given the ease with which they can do it. It can be seen that opening and managing multiple media accounts is something that can bring happy tidings to a business but only if the business weighs the pros and cons listed above and makes efforts to achieve success…