We know that business owners only have so much time in the day, and that tackling all the stuff that’s important after dealing with everything that’s urgent can be a serious challenge. When it comes to using social media to enhance the goals (increasing awareness, driving traffic, boosting revenue) of your small-to-medium sized business, building time into your schedule can make this important task easier (and free you up for the urgent matters that may arise).
Here are three tips to help you make the most of your precious little time:
1. Create a weekly posting template, to help you stay on task.
Organic reach on Facebook has dropped dramatically, and two things will help you maintain visibility: consistent engagement and promoting posts. Make your life easier by creating a template that won't leave you grasping for something new each day. For example:
Monday: Company news
Tuesday: Curated blog post of interest to target audiences
Wednesday: Words on images (aka interesting quotes)
Thursday: Promotion or event reminder
Friday: Fun image or weekend wishes
Sunday: Curated article or blog post
Supplement these with any good stuff you come across that’s relevant to your audience, with goal of at least 2-3 posts per day.
2. Promote those posts!
With organic reach in the cellar, promoting Facebook posts is your best bet to ensure visibility with your audiences. For best results, boost high priority content, time-sensitive posts, your owned images, and posts that are already performing well. Start with low budgets (say, $15-$20 per post) to get some insight, then increase budgets as appropriate.
3. Be choosy with where you spend your time.
With limited time available to manage your social media, put your effort into platforms where you can drive measurable results with your target audiences. Don't bother with Twitter if you don’t have time to invest in it; step up on Pinterest or Instagram. Twitter is great if you're ready to tweet 5-20 times per day, with a healthy mix of retweets and @replies. But you can drive major traffic to your website via Pinterest, and no platform uses hashtags to build audiences like Instagram. Visual content is also powerful on Facebook, so create a digital ecosystem across all three platforms to increase your fan base.
—by Eric Elkins
As CEO and Chief Strategist of WideFoc.us, Eric brings nearly two decades of of experience to our clients. In his other life, he’s a single dad, a good eater, and a bourbon aficionado.
