Do you find yourself spending too much time online but not sure if you are really getting the most out of it for your business? It’s easy to get bogged down with feeling you always need to be on your social media accounts, liking and sharing content, to help build your business. How can you be more effective with your social media?
Covid has had an impact
It’s likely your use of the internet surged during the recent lockdowns – we didn’t have much else to do, did we? According to a report by Ofcom in April 2020, adults were spending 4 hours 2 minutes a day online compared to an average of 3 hours 11 minutes in September 2018. Focusing specifically on social media, the Digital 2021: Global Overview report by We Are Social and Hootsuite, found that in the UK we are spending an average of 1 hour 49 minutes on social media each day. That’s 109 minutes a day and 763 minutes a week!
Have a quick look at your weekly screen time report on your phone from last week to see how much time you were on ‘social’. It might give you a bit of a wake-up call. Would some of that time be better spent focusing on your business rather than scrolling through your social media?
As lockdown begins to ease once again, we’ve got a few time savers to help you spend less time on your social media and more time on your business.
Getting the most out of your social media
1. Write a content strategy
Your content strategy strategy, aligned with your business goals, will help you with what content you should create and who you are communicating with.
2. Review how many platforms you use
It might be you are spreading yourself thinly across too many social media accounts. With the rapid speed that platforms are changing, learning all the features can be time consuming. Focus on the platforms that your customers spend most of their time on.
3. Create a content plan
A plan/calendar takes a little thought initially but will save you so much time in the long run. It also ensures you are getting a good spread of content so you don’t post about the same subject all the time. You will always know what you want to post about – that’s a great time saver. You can also build in relevant awareness days too.
4. Bulk create your content
Using your content plan, sit down and have a writing session. This involves writing each post, picking your hashtags and sourcing an image or creating a graphic. How often you want to do this is up to you but we think doing this every fortnight works best. This will also help eliminate last minute rushing when too often you can make a mistake or forget to post at all!
5. Create a list of hashtags
Research which hashtags you want to use and keep a master list handy for when you are writing your posts. This will ensure you don’t forget those all-important, relevant hashtags – which could affect your engagement.
6. Use a scheduling tool
Scheduling tools such as Hootsuite, ContentCal or Agorapulse (Google to find many others) are real time savers. They allow you to post your content across multiple platforms from one place. By looking at your insights you can find the best times to post for each platform and schedule them in for optimum engagement.
7. Dedicate set times each day for engagement
Dedicate set times each day to ‘check’ on your social media and give yourself a time limit. Try ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the afternoon. Use this time wisely for engagement. Checking twice a day will also ensure you respond to any comments in a timely manner.
8. Hire a social media manager
A good social media manager will offer a range of services so pick a package that suits your budget. You might just want them to write your content strategy and you take it from there. Or you could hire them to write and plan your content but you still do the posting. Or you might want to take a full management service where they write, post and engage for you.
Lime 