No-time
Heard this one?

“It takes too much time!”

Yes, it does take time. But so does your business.

Social isn’t something you add to your business, it’s something you integrate into it.

Here are 5 ways to make the most of the little time you have:

#1 Hire an expert

- To avoid floundering about trying a bit of everything, a social media specialist will create a plan based on your goals and resources. He or she will then select the best monitoring and content creation tools and strategies and then train you to use them effectively.

Social media can be a time wasting vortex unless you’re very focused. (I”m speaking from experience.)

#2 Spread it around

- Assign social tasks to several people. If you want your company to be social, make sure the people in your company are social. Encourage your employees to Twitter and contribute to your Facebook or Google+ page. A tip I got from HR social media specialist pal Fabrice Calando is to make your staff feel welcome to check into their Foursquare to Google Places account when coming to work.

#3 Keep a schedule

- Once you’ve established how much time you want to spend on social media tools, block that time on a calendar and make sure that it’s followed consistently.  For example, if it’s thirty minutes a day, you can schedule it in 3 10 minute blocks of ten minutes.

#4 Automate

- Automating messages is controversial with some purists, but the reality is that most small businesses aren’t anchored to their computer or smartphones 24/7.  To take advantage of prime posting times, there is little option other than to schedule them with programs such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or Sprout Social. 

Of course this doesn’t mean that you can ignore your feeds. Having notifications of mentions and comments is very important so as to be able to respond in a timely fashion. Including #hastags of your keywords is helpful as well.

#5 Create a Content Calendar

- One of the biggest time consuming monsters is looking for material to publish.

It only takes second to post a tweet or write a Google+ update. But it can take many times longer to find stuff to write about.

Make an editorial calendar that has at least the next two weeks of content on it. This can be re-purposed content like marketing material already published on other platforms, newsletter articles, press releases etc..

One method that helps focus material is to have theme days; the narrower the search, the faster the find.

 

 

not listening

Using social media alone won’t make your business social. Tools such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and Google+ allow you reach out and have a conversation with your community.

If you only use them to interrupt people’s timelines and feeds with self promotional content, you’ll be talking to yourself.

Making time for social is making time for your business.

 

 

 

What other time savers can you suggest?

 

About Ray Hiltz

Ray is an experienced Social Media Strategist who works with companies to integrate "social" into their business culture. Connect with Ray on +Ray Hiltz