How to manage your social media

For weekly insights, top tips and some free templates, don't forget you can subscribe to our newsletter.

In today’s post, I wanted to share how you can manage your social media.

While I’m certainly not the expert, over the past few years, I've been posting consistently on LinkedIn and Twitter, uploading blog content to our website and I wanted to share my key takeaways from what works for us.

So what do we do?

We provide project management and business consultancy to primary care organisations and specialise in the implementation of clinical services and workforce initiatives.

We work with NHS England, GP Federations, Primary Care Networks, Training Hubs, Health Education England and Clinical Commissioning Groups.

We are pretty niche and our business is typically driven by word of mouth, but we really like using social media to share what goes on behind the scenes, my personal experiences, industry insights and resources.

Mixing the personal with corporate content

One approach we are increasingly leaning towards is mixing up our corporate branded content with stories about the team, photos, people I've met that day and sometimes things I've been doing outside of work. I like to share learning and to show that I'm a normal person who makes mistakes.

Reaching out

Like you all, we are busy and have to limit our time on social media to concentrate on our client work and our own business development. However, for around 30 mins a day, I scroll on my social media platforms to keep an eye out for new people or organisations to follow and to like and comment on other peoples posts that have been helpful to me or just made me smile. Typically this is done when I’m walking the dog or first thing in the morning.

A helping hand

People always ask me how I fit it in and the answer is I have help. At THC we do all our marketing in house and I am lucky enough to have a marketing manager (shout out to Katie!) to create my graphics and upload my blogs, edit the podcast and manage the website.

The content always comes from me but the rest of the creativity is handed over. Blogs tend to get posted every week but, if inspiration strikes and I'm feeling brave, we just upload it when we want to.

Impostor Syndrome

I’m a big fan of social media in my personal and professional life, but when it comes to my own stuff, I always feel a little nervous when my content gets posted.

• Will you think its crap?

• Will you vehemently disagree with what I have to say?

• What if there is a mistake?

• What if you think – who the hell is she and who does she think she is?

Yes…. I too suffer from that dreaded impostor syndrome.

I feel all of these emotions but I share because I love my job, I want to help, I want to make you think and hopefully some of our stuff makes you smile.

So there you go folks, these are my key takeaways for managing social media. Next time I post on LinkedIn or Twitter, please feel free to stop and say 'hi'!

Returning to work after the holidays

The Business of Healthcare Power Players

Why do we keep doing what doesn't work?

Tara Humphrey is the founder of THC Primary Care, a leading healthcare consultancy specialising in workforce transformation and the host of the Business of Healthcare Podcast.

Tara and her team also work with GP federations supporting the implementation of clinical services.

Tara has over 20 years of project management and business development experience across the private and public sector and has an MBA in Leadership and Management in Healthcare, is published in the London Journal of Primary Care and is the author of over 150 blogs.