Do you feel like every business is on social media but yours? Do you want to start a social media marketing campaign, but are worried about the time commitment?
We don’t mean to sound like a self-help book, but if you answered yes to either of these questions, this blog post is here to help!
While social media marketing is a highly effective means to grow your business, many business owners feel like they don’t have the time or expertise to efficiently manage a social media marketing campaign. There are individuals who do spend copious amounts of time refreshing news feeds and uploading pictures of latte art, but social media does not have to take over your life if you don’t want it to. In this post we’re going to give you six tips to help you manage your social media campaign in just fifteen minutes a day.
Tip #1 – Pick Your Battles
There are very few businesses that need to be active on every social media site. Unless you hire a whole marketing team to manage it, certain networks will inevitably go by the wayside. You should determine which networks your target audience uses most often, and focus on just those. It may be that your clientele uses mostly Facebook and Twitter. If so, then those should be the only two sites you’ll need to start a great social media marketing campaign.
Tip #2 – Define Your Goals
Before you start Tweeting and posting about any old thing, determine the intent of your social media campaign. Are you trying to increase awareness about your brand, increase sales, or connect with customers? Depending on your goal, you will compose your posts to match. For example, a company trying to connect with their customers might compose posts that attempt to engage their audience, such as questions, jaw-dropping statistics, and creative pictures. Don’t waste your time composing content that is outside of your strategy.
Tip #3 – Start and End Your Day With Social Media
Just like you check your inbox in the morning and afternoon and reply to emails, you should do the same with your social media accounts. Reply to any comments, messages, or tweets you received, and then post fresh content yourself. When you bookend your day with social media you set a routine that allows you to forget about it during the rest of the day, without having it go neglected.
Tip #4 – Develop a Routine
While it may be tempting to leave your profile page open while you work and respond to comments as they come in, this is how you’ll end up wasting your whole day on social media. It’s not essential that you respond immediately, and your audience understands that your main focus is running your business. Instead, develop a routine that takes advantage of the times when your audience is most active and works with your schedule. A routine helps limit the time you spend on social media, and also ensures that you don’t let it fall by the wayside. A typical routine might look something like this:
Morning:
- Respond to comments, replies, messages, and retweets (5 minutes)
- Post and/or schedule new content you’ve prepped in advance (3 minutes)
- Interact with other people’s content – like and retweet new posts, and comment on a few things you find interesting (3 minutes)
Afternoon/Evening:
- Respond to any new content or comments (4 minutes)
Total = 15 minutes
Tip #5 – Use Tools To Manage Your Social Media
Platforms such as Hootsuite, SproutSocial, Tweetdeck, Buffer, and Gremlin all let you manage multiple social media platforms from a single place. You can respond to all your comments and retweets, post new content to all your platforms, schedule new posts, follow other users, and more, all from the same place. Instead of logging into multiple platforms, you can simply login to your social media management account and do it all from there. Some even have apps, so you can manage everything from your smart phone.
Tip #6 – Compose Posts Ahead of Time
While this post is mainly focused on limiting your online time, it’s worth mentioning how to efficiently create your content. Technically, this is going to be outside the 15 minute realm, but our tips will help you keep that time to a minimum.
In order to get the most out of your online time, compose all content a day or more in advance. In an Excel or Word document, organize potential tweets, posts, and images. Recycle old blog posts or videos on your website, or create something entirely new. Make sure that all the content you create aligns with your original goals for your campaign and is something your audience would enjoy reading. Content with images and videos tend to receive the most clicks and replies. If you’re having trouble coming up with content, consider looking at your website analytics to see what is driving people to your site. Use those keywords to compose a post your visitors will find interesting.
While this post is called ‘Social Media in 15 Minutes A Day’, there is really no magic number for how much time you should spend on social media. While 15 minutes of online social media time is enough for most companies, some businesses that have a huge following or do extensive amounts of marketing on their social networks may find that allocating more time to their campaign is both necessary and useful. Most businesses with a smaller following don’t need to post new content every day. In the time that you save on these days, use it to compose new content. No matter how your business uses social media, these six tips are invaluable. And the more you practice using social media, the more efficient you’ll become.