In today’s world, social media marketing is a must for any business. However, as competition online increases, it demands more time than in the past to connect with potential customers and clients.
Sadly, that often means that – especially for very small businesses and solopreneurs – it simply doesn’t get done as often as it should, or as efficiently as it should.
What you need to do in order to succeed:
Succeeding on social media requires a combination of several things – including your content (which is a whole different topic), the time you post, interaction with other accounts, and how regularly you post.
Additionally, some things work better on some platforms that on others. For instance, if you offer products that are aimed at a younger market, your chances of success are better on Tiktok than on Facebook. If your products or services are aimed more at say, small businesses, you would be better off targeting Linkedin and Instagram.
If your time is limited, it would be best to focus your effort on one platform. You can post your content to other sites too, but limit your interaction to one site. Learn as much as you can about it, and make it work for you.
It is better to have an audience of 1,000 people in one place than to have a hundred each in half a dozen places.
So – how do you manage your time for social media marketing (effectively)?
On the one hand there is the risk of not getting it done every day, and on the other hand there is the risk of spending too much time on it.
Option 1 – Set aside daily time – before you start working:
Note: It doesn’t have to be days per week – but at least do it for the whole working week.
If you focus on just one platform, you don’t need to spend a lot of time on interacting with other accounts (likes and comments – most platforms reward you for your user activity with more exposure).
Create – ideally – a quick video clip (30 seconds to 1 minute). It can be as simple you offering a tip to your followers, or a short clip of a new product with you talking viewers through it. You can do it on your phone.
Note: If you don’t want to do it on your phone, you can always use a tool like Canva (with a free text to speech voice over) or Pictory (collection of AI voices built in) to create videos with picture- or video backgrounds.
This will, however, take a bit more time to create than simply using your phone to create a quick video. Expect to spend anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to create and render a short video clip.
Upload it, and spend a few minutes liking and commenting on the stuff in your home feed. Done.
Note: The best time to upload differs from one social media platform to the next. If you are using Tiktok, Linkedin or Facebook, you can upload it early. Any other platform will require scheduling it to maximize the number of people seeing it.
We recommend later.com. Using later.com, you can send your content everywhere at the right time/s. While you can still concentrate your social activity on one social media platform, you can have content working for you in half a dozen different places.
Option 2 – Set aside a block of time on a weekend, and use a scheduling tool:
Instead of creating content every day, you can set aside some time on a weekend to create your content for the week. If you are using Tiktok, you can upgrade to a business account, and have the ability to schedule your posts.
If you are using anything else, you may want to look at a scheduling tool like later.com. Later.com supports everything except Youtube. But then again, you can schedule videos upon upload on Youtube.
Option 3 – Outsource some of it or all of it:
Depending on how tight your schedule is, you can in fact outsource all of it – but there is a catch…
Several social platforms – like Tiktok, and to some extent Facebook and Instagram – tend to localize what they show to their users. So if you have someone in India creating and uploading your Tiktok videos, they will be shown to people in India – even if your business is in the US or UK. If that region is not your target market, it means all of the money you spent will be wasted.
So if you want to outsource uploading content, you will have to either use someone local, or use a scheduling tool (which is seen as “a neutral source” by the social networks, and will distribute it according to your own location settings).
Outsourcing social activity can be done, but do keep in mind that non-native English speakers tend to use words differently, and your potential clients or customers can pick up on that. Not to mention that the worker might not interact with content that you would have, and thus reduce your exposure. Considering that it only takes a few minutes per day, it might be best to do it yourself.
(Instagram, for instance, looks at content you interacted with, and uses that to decide who to suggest your profile to. So if your outsourced worker likes cat videos every day, your profile will be suggested to other people who like cat videos – so if your are selling camping gear, not many of those people will be likely to follow you.)
The ideal would be to outsource the content creation, complete with writing of scripts and adding tags, and maybe even the upload scheduling.
We can help with that. Click Here to find out more.
One more tip:
If any of your social media posts do very well (compared to the rest), consider boosting that post – but only if the content is of such a nature that it will either bring you more followers, or visitors to your website.
In conclusion:
Managing your time for social media marketing can be simple – but if you only get to it “when you have time”…
It will probably not be on the right time of day to post, and it probably won’t be every day.
Find a way to have content available on a daily basis, and schedule it if need be. And find a few minutes per day to interact, even if you just dish out a few likes. Like the content of your potential clients or customers.
And DO NOT get sucked in – limit yourself to just a few minutes per day for interaction.
Depending on how you create your videos, you can do it all in 10 to 15 minutes per day. If you outsource the content and uploading, you can do it in under 5 minutes per day.