11 Tips to Simplify Your Social Media
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.
Follow Your Target AudienceThere 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 TopicsUpdating 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
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 ContentIf 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 SchedulerIf 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.
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 TopicsThere 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 GoalsAlong 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 FollowersNeed 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.
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 SelectivelyFinally, 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.