How to Find Time for Social Marketing | Culpeper Column

Savvy business owners and influencers in medium sized enterprises acknowledge there’s a business opportunity in social marketing.

It is estimated over 85% of consumers say they’ll change their behavior in response to social media content!

Conversations and relationships are currency.

The issue remains – finding time.

Social Marketing Culpeper

My goal for all my clients is to chisel their approach to be strategic, streamlined and sustainable. [By the way, I know you won’t believe me, but that was entirely unintentional alliteration.]

Strategic – Select your Platforms

For the uninitiated, a crash course in social media platforms can be overwhelming.

You don’t need to be everywhere. Focus on one – three networks, and build there – engage in conversations, contribute your unique and interesting content, tell your story, respond to the stories of others.

Take time to decide which platforms your target audience enjoy. If your audience is businesses, consider LinkedIn. If your target is a young audience, it might be Instagram. What suits your offerings and services? A consultant may like the quick, concise nature of Twitter, the work of stonemason may display well on Pinterest.

For example, for business I manage a Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. Notice some major platforms are not included!

Tip: Set up a Google+ account for increased prominence in search engine results. It’s worth verifying your location on Google Maps as this is displayed alongside in your search results.

Streamlined – Schedule Social Media

In even the fastest paced businesses, there are times that could easily be used on checking on your social media accounts, replying to messages, and crafting updates.

There might be an opportunity for a daily rhythm of a ten minutes between afternoon tasks. It might become your Friday morning routine.

For me, daily doesn’t work — several days per week I am in other regions. I have settled on one Friday morning per month curating and scheduling content and another Friday morning per month researching and writing articles. In between, I’ll find ten minutes once a week or so to respond to messages, comment on trending news or posting anything of value I’ve come across.

Take a step back – if, say, over the next year you wanted to ensure you were providing your unique and valuable information on the hot topics of your industry – could you do that? Perhaps create a list, and a calendar and handle a topic at a time.

Sustainable – Harness the Power of Organization, Habit… and HootSuite

There are incredible time saving tools and habits that can save you time and work as the engine powering your social marketing.

In the day to day business activities – deliverables for clients, preparation for a meeting or research for a new product offering – you are in the stream of your own story. Create habits that capture these insights, educate and inform your audience, and celebrate accomplishments.

I have two such habits to share. First, I’ve created google alerts to send me a daily email with the top news articles in my topics of interest. I started this years ago to remain ahead of daily news on specific topics in Washington DC. Now I use it to remain informed, but also to curate articles I find useful for sharing.

Second, there are a number of high res photography sites I’ve subscribed to which send periodic emails of public domain or CC0 licence images which is available for use in blog articles or social content without attribution. These I check once a month and curate into a google album for easy access when scheduling posts.

One tool I use to schedule social marketing is HootSuite to manage several different accounts on different networks from one place. You can monitor incoming messages and send and schedule updates through it. There’s a free plan available if you are managing three accounts or less, or you can pay a reasonable fee for more features.

I hope from this article you have gained valuable insight into how to make time for the social marketing. I believe these tips for a strategic, streamlined and sustainable approach will equip you with confidence in your social marketing success!

And if you do need support to develop a plan specific to your business, don’t hesitate to reach out, we have several social management and consulting packages available.

Irene Karedis Borys

@IreneKBorys

iborys@cyberbility.com