You’re busy. You’re trying to run your business and you probably are wearing multiple-hats — marketing, accounting, sales, operations, etc. You want to use social media, but you don’t have a lot of time to spare. While social media can take a lot of time, you can get quite a bit out of it just by devoting an hour a day. Here’s how…
Choose Your Battles
There are tons of social networks where you could spend a lot of time. Pick 2 or maybe 3 where it makes the most sense – choose based on where your customers already are. If you really don’t have a lot of time, choose the one social network where you can have the best connection with your customers.
Pick Your Content Channel
Part of any successful social media strategy is providing great content. This doesn’t mean you have to write long blog posts every day, but decide what type of content you are comfortable with. Maybe you can record quick 2-3 minute videos and upload them to YouTube or maybe you can provide insights on Twitter or Facebook. Choose the type of content that you’re comfortable with providing on a regular basis.
Plan out Your Content
When you’ve decided what type of content you’d like to provide, create a list of possible topics. Brainstorm ideas and keep a running list. What questions do your customer ask? What types of topics are hot within your industry? As you’re reading blogs or websites, think about what types of questions or concerns are brought up. Are there opportunities for you to providing additional insight or opinions?
Set Up Distribution
There are lots of ways to post content on one site and have it automatically distributed out to other places online. How you do this depends on what content you’re creating, where you’re posting it and where you want to distribute to. Look for tools that make distribution easy.
Schedule Content
Whatever content you’re providing, you can create in bulk and schedule it to go out at intervals. Have a bit of time on a weekend? Create content for the entire week and schedule it to go out. This is a great way to keep information going out regularly.
Set Up Monitoring
Use tools like Google Reader and Google Alerts to monitor for mentions of your name, company and brand names. Monitor also for references and responses to content you post. Once you have monitoring setup, you should only have to spend a few minutes a day checking and responding.
Keep Up on the News
No matter what your particular industry, there’s bound to be news that’s interesting to your customers (and in your best interest to know about). Using a tool like Google Reader, you can quickly scan through all the news for the day in 15 minutes or so. Keep an eye out for topics that might make for good content and add ideas to your list as you read.
Set Aside Time for Interaction
The real key to social media is having actual conversations and responding to other people. Set aside some time every day to to talk with people, share other’s content, and generally be personable. Work on reaching out to new people and building your network. Take a few minutes in the morning and again later in the day for some conversations.
Social Media is a Trade-off
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, social media is a trade-off. You can get great exposure to more people at less cost than through other promotional methods. However, social media requires a commitment to time instead of costing money. Once you get in the habit of using social media daily and set up some tools to make it easier, you’ll find the trade-off is worth it!
How do you use social media during your day?
(photo by Lynn Pernille Photography)