There are about five or six questions I get asked the most by individuals who are looking at exploring the possibilities of creating a social presence for their business. One of the most popular questions is about how to manage the time and process needed to be successful at it. It is true that social marketing (networking, media, etc.) can take up a good amount of time… but it doesn’t have too. Even taking the smallest steps each day can make a huge impact for your business. Because there are so many benefits to a social business (SEO improvement, community-building with your customers, and transparency just to name a few), there is no reason you should not be doing it. Today I just wanted to throw out a few tips I give to my clients on how to manage time when it comes to social marketing.
As I noted above, running a social marketing strategy or campaign does not need to be a full-time effort. Because the best growth comes incrementally, you can successful do two to three things a day, consisting of no more than an hour of your time to start making an impact. And one of the great things about social marketing is that it can be changed and altered based on results almost immediately. For anyone out there who follows a FranklinCovey system or the Get It Done method by David Allen, it all comes down to planning. I love the quote, “Plan your play, then play your plan.” Like many other areas of business and life, this is very true when it comes to social marketing efforts. Here are a couple of things I do to effectively balance my time.
Create a Content Calendar – You may have a blog, a podcast, a Facebook Fan Page, video feeds on your website, and many more different kinds of “authored” pieces you want to deliver to your audience. No matter what your profession is, all these things are considered content, and they are the things that keep your visitors coming back for more. Because it is so important to be constantly updating your content, you need to make time for it. That is why I developed what many in the media business have been using for years… a content calendar. Basically a content calendar is a visual tool to help you lay out what get developed and published each day of the month. You can go out to any office supply store and purchase one of those washable wall calendars or even use something like Google Calendar – anything that can give you a month-at-a-glance perspective. I like the big wall calendar because then I can use mini multi-colored Post-It notes to place and move easily on the calendar. Then what I do is every month is review when I want to release my content, I drop a note on that day. For example, my newsletter goes out every first business day of the month, so that has a green Post-It. I plan out blog post topics, podcast schedules, etc. I also review what other marketing and business events are going on as well, so I can plan content around those. For example, if I know that Facebook is having a developer’s conference on the 15th, I mark that on the content calendar so I can plan content around that specific event. When I am done (or at least have made a dent in all I want to publish), I have the ability to move things around and balance my content creation on a daily, weekly, and monthly viewpoint. Creating my content calendar has saved my life, not to mention saving me time instead of spinning around in circles every day trying to figure out what to do next.
Focus on a Single Vehicle at a Time – Your marketing channels are essentially your vehicles. Each vehicle does something different for your plan and works differently as well. A great way to save time in your social marketing effort is to straighten your focus on one vehicle at a time. For example, Facebook has been a strategy on my list for quite some time. There are so many different things I do in Facebook from a business and marketing standpoint, that it needs to be fed and cared for on a regular basis. But instead of going in there daily and wasting a bunch of time, I tackle all of my Facebook tasks in one session. I do my updates, advertising management tasks, content deployment, etc. in one hour as opposed to sporadically throughout the day. And this is all planned out on my content calendar. Also, I never try and tackle more than two vehicles in a day.
Utilize Mobile Deployment Tools – One of the great things about the rise of social media is that you can get connected to it in so many different ways, and one of the most popular now a days is through your mobile device. You can not only view social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube on your phone, but you can also create content with it as well. This can save a ton of time and allow you to publish more content around your busy life. For example, I was waiting in line a few days ago at a store and the cashier was having some problems, so the line was very slow. I had been thinking all day about a type of blog post I wanted to do, and since some more ideas had popped in my head, I wanted to start writing my post. Using my phone, I was able to punch out a quick and dirty draft of my blog post and cue it up in my blog service. Later that night I logged into my content management system and there it was. I gave it one more quick read, and then published it! 90% of the work was done on my mobile device and it saved me a ton of time.
I hope that a couple of these tips help you balance your time and Social Marketing effort.
Robert Stanke (RobertStanke.com) is a Social Business Strategist, Internet Marketing & Community Management Professional based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Robert’s experience spans small business to enterprise-level social marketing execution. In addition to supporting many consulting contracts, Robert is also the Interactive Community Manager for Life Time Fitness in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
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