Do you find yourself stuck on social media constantly as a business owner or social media manager? Whether it’s because you’re personally addicted or you have a lot to do, we’ve got 26 super tips to help you cut down on the time you spend on social media.
1. When formulating your marketing plans, pick only a few of those threads to promote on social media. Not all marketing strategies will fit on social platforms, so choose the ones you want to focus on wisely.
2. Don’t spread yourself too thin across a variety of platforms. Stick to the big three – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn/Instagram (the former an option for B2B businesses) – if you want to make your social time more valuable.
3. It’s definitely a good idea to concern yourself with analytics focusing on visibility, but the number of Twitter followers you have at the end of the day isn’t as useful as you think it is. Think about this: it’s better to have 10 followers that click every link you post than 1 million followers that barely engage with you.
4. Always bring your strategies back to the drawing board. If something doesn’t work on social media within three days, kill it. Figure out what was wrong, try again and repeat the process.
5. Don’t forget to schedule your content. Users like consistency and value from social posts. Also don’t be afraid to break up this routine to occasionally retweet and respond so you look more personable on business accounts.
6. Don’t allocate 15 minutes here or there to your social media planning and posting. Instead, focus an hour or two of your time on your social tasks, then push it all away. You can get stuck on social media forever if you keep coming back 20 times a day.
7. Plan your updates accordingly. If you’ve got a special promotion coming out within a few weeks, schedule your content in ways that will allow you to promote this timely and valuably.
8. It’s okay to post a lot on social media as long as you aren’t going overboard – just choose a consistent amount. Consumers find it odd when the businesses they follow start spamming content one day, followed by a week of radio silence.
9. There’s a perfect time to schedule your content, too. Find a time that works best for your audience and subject, then base your content posting schedule around this clock.
10. Regular maintenance is necessary for social posting, even if it’s just going over platform news and renovations. When they release new graphics, yours have to change. When they change their formulas, so do you.
11. Delegating social media tasks to someone else is a great idea. Social tasks aren’t rocket science, so it’s easy to find someone capable of crafting, posting or editing social content in order to move a lot of your social chores off your to-do list.
12. If you know someone who loves social media, let them have the above job. They probably have fan insight you don’t possess.
13. Outsourcing jobs doesn’t mean kicking your feet up and you’re abdicated of all responsibility. You still have to manage those you outsource tasks to, and that does take time and effort.
14. If you regularly post business blogging content, most blogging platforms let you auto share posts to linked social media accounts. This is especially true of sites like Tumblr and WordPress, so consider using them as blog hosting platforms.
15. Hashtags aren’t just for millennials. Businesses can use and follow them too to keep in touch with current trends and stories that they can use to better market their own content and agendas.
16. Want to stay up to date on how your brand is viewed on social media? Websites like Mention.com track social media and Web mentions for people and businesses so they can test the waters of their social brand image.
17. Google Analytics allows users to set up weekly analytics reports for their social channels, and you’d be wise to take them up on the offer. Set up social analytics and have the reports emailed directly to you every week.
18. You don’t need to know every time someone follows you on Twitter – this is something you can check once a day through your follower list and then forget about it for another 23 hours. Turn all unnecessary notifications off so you aren’t wading through a social wasteland in your email inbox every day.
19. Use tools that allow you to combine your social accounts into one – eClincher, perhaps?
20. It’s entirely possible to share third-party content on social media, and you can do this through a curation service. These services usually cost some cash, but the investment is well worth the value they bring to your social accounts.
21. Don’t get brandjacked or sniped from the social names you want. If you don’t have your business name reserved on social media through a service like Knowem.com, do so right now.
22. Never forget that you need to keep track of your popular content. When you know what you’re doing that’s working, you know how to duplicate it.
