Wednesday, August 2nd, 2017
A social media presence can be a huge asset.
It can be profitable.
It can build a tremendous customer base.
It can be outrageously complicated to effectively manage on a regular basis.
We all start social media marketing campaigns with the greatest of intentions. Once you’ve set up your multiple accounts, it usually only takes a few days to realize just how time consuming and tedious updating all of the accounts can be.
Rather than letting your social media accounts go inactive (which is terrible in terms of drawing new customers), simplify the process to make social media work for you and your schedule.
Simplify Your Social Media
Follow Your Target Audience
There is no sense wasting resources like time and energy on social media platforms that aren’t productive. If you’re targeting Baby Boomers, you’re going to find most of them on Facebook, not Snap Chat. Set up social media accounts where you will expect to find most of your potential customers.
Get Alerts on Relevant Topics
Updating your feeds on a regular basis can be a challenge – especially if you’re busy and run out of ideas. Fortunately, there are billions of people in the world to help you think of new things to write about, you just have to set up alerts to find out what’s happening in the world you can write about.
Google Alerts is a simple way to do this. Feed in some keywords and topics, get alerts daily and then pick the most interesting one and your work is done.
Double (or Triple) Dip on New Content
Double or Triple Dip on New Content
If you find something interesting to use for an update, you don’t have to stop after using it one time. Write a short blog for your website blog and then attach an image.
Use the image to Pin the article to Pinterest. Tweet out a blurb about the topic and link to the original article or yours. Post a summary of the article on Facebook and link back to your site. One-two-three for the price of one.
Recycle Old Content
If you’ve been running a blog or website for years, you likely have hundreds of old posts and articles. Dust off a few of those, make a few updates to bring the article into the current year and post it again. Unless you have a very dedicated following, they won’t know the difference anyhow.
Use a Social Media Scheduler
If daily updates seem too tedious, set everything up to be automated. A social media scheduler is a software that posts automatically after you’ve set parameters and loaded content. Take a block of time on one day of the week to set up the system, and then let it work for you all week long.
Outsource Social Media Campaigns
Outsource your Social Media
Another option is to simply outsource the whole social media gig. There are many freelancers and firms who handle social media accounts for clients. Alternatively, this is a job that can be kept in house via an assistant or employee. Your social media person can run the whole thing including posting on your accounts or just create the posts, load them in the scheduler for you and you opt for posting dates and approvals.
Simplify Core Topics
There is no need to post about anything and everything on your social media accounts. You should develop a singular focus for your accounts so that followers know what to expect and you can streamline your process.
Pick one or two narrowly focused channels and stay within those rather than jumping from one area to another as the whim strikes. Narrow focus allows you to streamline your keyword searches and alerts as well.
Clarify Social Media Goals
Along with simplifying your topics for social media posts, you should also be sure you know the goals of your social media accounts. Are you gathering new customers? Building a brand? Offering specials?
Clarify what it is you want social media to do for you, and it will be far easier to reach that goal, seeing as how you know what it is. It is important to let anyone else on your social media team know the goal as well to keep them focused, and in some cases it doesn’t hurt to let followers know the goal as well so that they know what they are getting from the accounts.
Ask for Interaction from Followers
Need to shake things up? Simply ask for interaction from your followers. Not all social media accounts lend themselves well to interaction, but encouraging comments, retweets and shares can be done in many ways and have nice marketing benefits in both the short and long term.
Make Social Media Routine
Social Media Routine
Like anything else, if you make your social media accounts part of your daily and weekly routine, they will easily fall into place.
Use some of the suggestions above to streamline the process so that it takes as little time as possible and then religiously schedule and protect that time on a daily or weekly basis. Spending 15 minutes on a new post or two first thing in the morning might be just the way to kick off the day, finish your coffee and feel like you’ve accomplished a little something.
Engage Selectively
Finally, if you want to avoid burning out on social media, you will need to engage only selectively with followers and account users. Checking likes, retweets and comments throughout the day will consume your schedule and waste time.
Post in the morning and then check-in one time for a set amount of time to see what fruit the posts have yield. Avoid arguments in the comments or replying to each response as these can become a huge time waste and make social media way more frustrating than it needs to be.
Social Media can produce a terrific return on investment, but you should be careful to not invest more resources than you can afford. Simplifying the social media process is a great way to ensure your brand is online, your customers can connect with you, and you can manage the workload.
Hey, am Uttoran Sen - the CEO and Founder of the Guest Crew Influencer Marketing Community and a full time Blogger. Follow me on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.
Account
Hi Uttoran,
I was nodding my head yes through this entire article. Social media can work for us, or it can eat up all our time and worse, throw us in a tail-spin.
We do have to have a good strategy in place, just like you have mentioned in this article.
Following our clients and others in our niche is how we need to work it.
Most of all we need to keep up with our time management. Like you mention: Check it in the morning and then go back later on.
Great advice!
-Donna
Twitter: SusanWPTutorial
says:
Hi Uttoran,
Great tips and something that I need to start doing. You’re definitely correct, it can be time-consuming when you’re first getting started.
Now that my blog is finally starting to gain some momentum. I am actually able to see which social media platforms are worth my time and energy.
I’ll definitely use some of these tips to see if I can make my life a little bit easier.
Thanks for sharing, have a great day 🙂
Susan
Twitter: makone007
says:
Strong social media presence is the key to become a brand. It is really good to know how to become impactful on social media.
Thanks for sharing.
Gaurav
hi.. it is very good and helpful article.
thanks for sharing, Thanks a lot
Twitter: Nzekwe Godswill
says:
Awesome checklist. I never heard of mention before. Will look into this when I have more time.
Twitter: ChrisHufnagel
says:
Social media is one of the BIGGEST time sucks on the internet. It can also be one of the biggest marketing tools you have.
The first tip you gave about being where your audience hangs out is probably the best of them! I see too many people that have a social media account on every platform. They are spreading themselves too thin.
I always suggest using just 2 or 3 networks. This keeps it simple and allows you to really become an expert at marketing on those 2 or 3. I think it is way better to have 5k followers on one networks! than 5k spread out over 10 different social networks!
i am taking help of social media but was using up to the mark.
you post suggested my alot of things which i am gonna implement NOW.
Thank you for such a great stuffs.
Keep sharing
🙂
Great tips shared! I loved all the tips mentioned here. I believe the most important focus should be on targeting the right audience who will be interested in our product or service.
Thanks
It’s really all about consistency if you do what is outlined in the tips above in a consistent way you can’t really fail.
Great job, This is very great content, I got really good information from this content and it helps me a lot, I hope it can help many people like me.
great idea about simple social media can you suggest me plugin like buffer for monitise social share for my blog
Twitter: questoquora
says:
Wow i love this great article about simplificaiton of social media and i would love to practice it. I just need some additional plugins too. Lovely tips by the way. Thank you for the wonderful share 🙂
Great suggestions! These are good reminders every now and then. Some of these accounts really don’t work for everybody – clients and business owners alike. I like the strategies mentioned, I’m only using a few of them and these are great additions to my list of must-do’s. Thanks for sharing, Uttoran!
I am easily distracted in general and social media makes it worse! I now have set periods of time where I pay attention to it and then I ignore it to get something else done. I will look into Raam’s suggestion of HootSuite too. I also have my personal Facebook pared down to people I actually know.
such a great trick keep it up with this type of content .
Hi Uttoran,
You have made a great article. Nowadays everyone should know how to use social media for your business. I feel glad to read this tips, going to apply it to my strategy. Thanks for sharing this with us!
Hello Uttoran,
In this trending running world of social networks, Social media can really works for us. Everybody from young generation to old are interesting in social media stuff. Being professional you should know how and when to use it to the targeted audience or goal. We need to keep up with our time management.
Thanks for sharing this wonderful tips! 🙂
Hi,
What a joy to be here.
This is indeed a wonderful and informative piece you created about social media. Lot of information to pic and apply.
Thank you so much for these valuable tips.
I am bookmarking this post for future read.
Hi Uttoran! All these tips are great! The first one possibly is the most important one. A lot of people try to be active on all and any social media platforms. However, since their audience is only active on one or two platforms, the rest of the platforms just waste time. I always encourage running a few tests, analyzing the traffic source and then making the decision on where to be active for at least 3-6 months. Thanks again!
Twitter: sanjaykrchoubey
says:
Hi Uttoran! These all of 11 tips are important to do social media optimization in the simplest manner. Keep posting these valuable stuffs.
Awesome tips boss!!!
I think I never used social media so deep for promoting or blogging.
Thank You