Valuable Time-Saving Tools for Your Social Media
You spend so much time crafting your posts for social media. Then you learn that a tweet only lasts a matter of minutes before it vanishes! Want to learn how to create better posts? Sure you do!
Limit Yourself
If you’re a solopreneur, don’t take on every social media platform. Take on two or three of the top ones. If you don’t know what those are, the folks at Pew Research Center can help you identify the top-tier ones, along with their demographics. Yes, this isn’t a tool, but it is a strategy that can help you.
Measure What Counts
The number of followers is a vanity metric that doesn’t necessarily get people in the door of your business. Choose instead to go with metrics such as engagement. By the way, here are some Business Analytics Tricks for Twitter that you might find interesting. These tools are valuable:
- Google Analytics – can help you “close the loop” on where your blog traffic is coming from.
- Analytics on each platform – each platform has its own metrics.
- Cyfe – gives you a dashboard of how each of your social platforms performs.
Batch Your Posts
So, when you’re coming up with headlines for Twitter or Facebook, write them in a block of time. Don’t sit and write one at a time. The time it takes you to switch gears is valuable.
Schedule All at Once
How about doing five or ten posts at once? Or a week’s worth in one sitting? Then schedule them all at once. There are many schedulers out there–HootSuite, SproutSocial, and many more. Jeff Bullas has a complete list on his 17 Best Social Media Management Tools, so I won’t reinvent the wheel here. But for brainstorming those topics, how about these ideas:
- Mindmapping
- Brainstorming (I prefer groups to solo)
- A blogging buddy (my blogging buddy is Bridget Willard) to help you when you’re stuck!
Write Five Topics
One of the most helpful hints I heard when I first started blogging was from Syed Balkhi, who suggested writing five topics at once so you don’t have an excuse to quit writing. And in case you didn’t know, you really can create a wonderful blog post in an hour. Yes, you can! And speaking of blogging, which goes hand-in-hand with social media, here are some favorite writing tools:
- Relax Melodies – plays white noise that you can customize, such as rain, surf, etc.
- Coschedule – helps you write great headlines
- Noko – time management tool that lets you create reports
Does Social Media Take Too Much Time?
Some days it feels that way, doesn’t it? Let me know if you have a favorite tip in the comments! Thank you.
I learned to batch my work from being a secretary my whole life. That really has helped me in my social media and marketing role because you’re right, task switching is the real problem with efficiency.
Great post. I’m glad you’re my blogging buddy.
Hi Bridget,
Yes! Working in batches is the best thing for productivity! Switching gears is a killer.
Thank you so much for all your support, in so many way. I really appreciate you!
Carol
I’ve been so busy recently I try to schedule my weekly social media activity in one sitting. Buffer is my tool of choice. As you say it can be a good idea to do similar tasks together. Once I’ve got my brain in ‘social media’ mode I can churn out a good bunch of headlines.
Learning how to be more efficient is very important, especially in marketing. Having said that, I don’t think I can manage a blog post in an hour given the amount of research I do.
Hi Clement,
I’d say the busier we get, the more important it is to schedule in batches.
And I’d say you’d be lucky to create one of your posts in 10 hours, given the massive amount of research you do.
Mostly, that post is to give some hope to small business owners that they can indeed create something in a small amount of time. But a well-researched post is another beast altogether.
Thank you, as always, for your support. It means a lot to me.
Carol