Social media is a powerful tool that can help you build your brand; however, it’s also time-consuming and can be overwhelming. You have to maintain multiple accounts, keep up with what your audience is saying, and post regularly in order to gain results. If you’re like me (and many other small business owners), you probably don’t have enough time or energy to devote to social media marketing. But there are ways of using social media more efficiently so that it doesn’t take over your life! Here are some expert tips for making the most of this important medium without spending all day on it:
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Social media is a powerful tool
Social media is a powerful marketing tool that can help you build your brand. However, it’s also time-consuming and overwhelming. If you don’t have the time or resources to manage your social media accounts on a consistent basis, hiring someone else to take over this task is the best option for you. And if you do decide to hire an expert VA, here are five hacks they can use to help save you time:
Eliminate the time suck
You’re a busy business owner, so you know that social media is a time-consuming task. You have to spend hours on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter each day just to stay relevant in your industry. And while social media marketing is important for building brand awareness and customer loyalty, it can also be a major time suck if you allow this. If this sounds like your experience with social media lately, then fear not—there are hacks that will help you save time when working on your various business accounts.
Create a posting calendar
This is the most important part of your social media plan. With a calendar, you can easily see the content you’ll be sharing each day; and how much time it will take to create that content. You can even set reminders for when it’s time to share particular posts! A few apps that help to create calendars include Google Calendar, Trello, and Asana (and if you use them for other business tasks, they may already have templates that work well). If none of these platforms suits your needs—or if none of them exists—you can create one on paper or in Excel, although this may require more thought than using other tools provided by default.
Become strategic with scheduling tools
As part of its growth strategy, Sprout Social has created a blog about the importance of social media scheduling tools. The blog covers four different types of tools:
- Hootsuite and Buffer are two popular options that allow you to schedule posts across multiple social media platforms at once. These apps can help you save time by letting you batch-upload content in advance.
- Edgar helps users create a library of content they want to share on their various accounts over time, while also keeping track of what’s been posted so far, and where it went (i.e., which tweets got likes, retweets, etc.). This way, if you have several pieces of content ready for publishing now but don’t have time for each one individually—or if something comes up later—you won’t miss publishing any one piece. Your system will remember everything that needs posting!
- Sprout Social’s own tool called Later allows users specifically looking for an editorial calendar solution to plan ahead. Users do not have to deal with multiple apps simultaneously.
“You have to be willing to let some things go”, says [social media expert] Josh. “If you’re trying to grow your Instagram and Facebook advertising at the same time, it’s just not going to happen”. So, which social media site should you focus on? The one that has the most potential for growth. “If we think about our business in terms of revenue potential (and we should), then I think it’s obvious that Twitter and LinkedIn are going to win out,” says Josh. “But if we’re talking purely about brand awareness and engagement with customers, then Facebook is probably better than anything else.”
Take work offline and do it in bulk
Social media can be a powerful tool for marketing your business; however, some of us just don’t have the time to dedicate to it. And that’s okay! Social media might not be right for every business, or at least not right now. But if you think your business needs to be on social media, I’m here to help! Get strategic with scheduling tools: If you’re serious about using social media as part of your marketing strategy and want to start seeing results from all that work in a short amount of time, I recommend trying out one of the scheduling tools available online (Buffer is free). Scheduling posts ahead of time will save you time by eliminating the need for logging in at various intervals throughout each day, and manually posting everything yourself. And remember: It doesn’t matter how often or how infrequently you post; what matters is consistency!
Social media is a powerful marketing tool, but it doesn’t have to take up all of your time
You can use a VA (virtual assistant) to help you with social media tasks so that you can spend more time on other projects, remaining productive throughout the day. A VA will take over the most time-consuming parts of your social media presence, like posting content and responding to comments or questions from followers. A good VA will also create a posting calendar for you so that all posts are scheduled in advance. This means no more frantically trying to get something out before an event starts or while something else is happening in real life!
Conclusion
Social media is a powerful tool for marketing your business; however, it can also be demanding of time, and overwhelming. Fortunately, there are simple ways of making the most of your time on social media. You will then be able to grow your brand instead of just keeping up with what everyone else is doing. By eliminating time-suckers like scheduling posts in bulk; or by taking work offline and doing it in bulk (like creating a posting calendar), you’ll find yourself with more productive hours every week. And when those hours are spent strategically using scheduling tools? Well, then you’re really onto something!