Complaints about social media? I hear them from my husband, family, friends, but most often from fellow biz owners and marketers. “It’s such a time suck.” “I wish I could hire someone to do this for me.” “Why do I need Pinterest?” “It’s just egos talking to egos.” I hear it all, and I get it. While I enjoy the social media marketing, even I need to take a break sometimes. If you can't afford to hire someone like Faitt Media to manage your social media, here are a few tips for those who value the being intentional, being mindful with how you market, of how you spend your time on business so that can, in turn, enjoy living, spending time with your loved ones, getting outside, moving your body, enjoying live music, having a delicious meal and a potent beverage, and on and on. Read on friends.
1. Limit your number of accounts. Seriously. Put a cap on it. Pick 2-4. Facebook and Twitter are useful for many, but if your customers don’t live on Twitter, don’t dedicate your time there. Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram are valuable tools, but if you’re not genuinely enjoying it or there’s no real ROI, stop. If you evolve or a new fancy platform is created, you test out the waters then.
2. Get organized. At the risk of being repetitive with advice from previous posts, get your calendar organized. Here’s our Faitt Media Brainstorming 2015 Calendar. Create a list of topics you’d like to write about, and create a calendar of when it’d make the most sense to share thesm. And don’t stress out about it. Just get your message and content out. It’ll refine itself as you do it more.
3. Get passionately intentional. Decide how often you’d like to share and what – an article once a week? Photos? Industry advice? Maybe once a day? Maybe just twice a week? Make some decisions. Put them on your calendar. If you feel later that it’s too much or not enough, change it. It's not written in blood.
4. Automate. Once you’ve gone through the prior steps, take time to review a number of automation offerings that, while requiring some time up front to plan, will ultimately help free up time for you to enjoy the people or activities you value most. An added benefit to using these services is that you’re more compelled and motivated to get focused with your overall marketing message. And did you know you can recycle posts and articles? Check out these services: Hootsuite, SproutSocial, Meet Edgar.
5. Check Yourself. How about exercising some self-control and limiting your time on social media? Try using a free or paid app that controls how much time you spend reading irrelevant articles or stalking frenemies. There’s a whole new crop of apps to check out:
Read this article from Becoming Minimalist.
Love to complain, and don’t want to change your ways? Wake up. Snap out of it, and get some self-control. Seriously. Life is short. With these steps and tools, you can easily utilize social media for marketing your business without losing your mind or your soul.