So you don’t have time to post social media content regularly? Join the club! It might be a great idea, and sure, it’s cheap insofar as it doesn’t necessarily incur hard costs. But what about the cost of your time?
The biggest complaint small business owners usually have about using social networking is the amount of time it takes out of your day, which can completely screw up your time management.
In the end it can cost you more than it’s worth to do it yourself, and that’s the primary reason why it so often falls by the wayside and isn’t effective.
#1: Create an Editorial Calendar
The most difficult aspect of posting regular status updates on social media is deciding what to publish. It’s a lot like having a hectic social life; unless you write it all down somewhere each time you get a new invitation, you’re likely to forget something important.
Create a “calendar” where you can add ideas as they come to you, and schedule important dates like holidays and industry events that make good social media fodder. The most obvious example is the upcoming holiday season, but you can use almost any opportunity to plan appropriate content that coincides with it. Some ideas are: the weekend, elections, spring, summer and fall, the Fourth of July and other public holidays.
#2: Prepare in Advance
If you’ve ever sat down to create a social media update and your muse is noticeably absent, you’ll know how difficult it is to produce usable content on the spot. Once you have your editorial calendar all set up, it’s easy to take some time whenever you have a bit and construct a few posts. Even if you don’t finalize them until the day you actually publish them, preparing an outline of the points you want to share will help you stick to your time management plan on the day.
#3: Use Productivity Tools
Don’t fall into the trap of “just doing it.” Nike’s famous slogan might have merit in some cases, but often taking the time to find the right tools can save you many hours of fiddling to get it right later. There are a number of great productivity aids for social media posts, including:
- DivvyHQ, which is a “spreadsheet-free” editorial calendar option
- HootSuite and Buffer, both of which are aggregators that enable you to create updates and post to several social media profiles at one time
- SproutSocial and TweetDeck are both dashboard-driven publishing tools that let you filter your social networking profiles so you can follow trends and see only what you really want to know.
They’re called productivity tools for a reason: they improve your productivity and therefore your time management!
#4: Schedule Auto Posting
Most productivity tools can be set up for auto posting, which means you can add updates a week in advance and have them go live at the crucial time—regardless of whether you’re at your desk or not. This also applies to various blogging platforms such as WordPress, HubSpot or Google’s Blogger, which enable you to publish your blog posts automatically to your social media profiles.
Email marketing programs like MailChimp have social media widgets that allow both senders and recipients to publish directly to various social platforms at the time of sending. Given that the numbers of people using social media are truly mind-boggling, you can be forgiven for seeking out more streamlined methods of managing it.
#5: Cultivate Sharing Relationships
The value of social media content isn’t found in what you post but in your engagement with followers, so cultivate sharing relationships. Not only does it boost your visibility and your ranking in search when others share your posts, but it also optimizes the ROI of the time you spend on social media. In other words, get your followers to do the work for you by giving them a reason and incentive to share your stuff. Contests, special offers, reciprocal sharing—all those go a long way towards spreading the word and building your online profile. And of course, saving you time!
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