yogaIf you make and keep one New Year’s Resolution for your business it should be to make 2012 the year you really get stuck into social media. I have waxed lyrical in previous blogs about the benefits to small businesses - it is low cost although does require the time resource. Unfortunately time is a scarce commodity for most small business owners and directors, so despite its potential I know it can be a struggle to find the time to fit it in.

So I thought I would put together some tips and strategies to help you fit social media into your day. I cannot add an extra couple of hours to your day, but I may give you a couple of ideas that can help.

1)      Use it as some time out with a coffee

Although you need to make sure you don’t go totally ‘off piste’ and start looking at unrelated topics, if you think about it less as a chore and more as something interesting it could become part of your ‘break time’.

  • Use this time to look a bit further afield i.e. check out any videos for your niche / sector (10 mins)
  • Visit your LinkedIn groups to see what discussion there are and post some comments (15 mins)
  • Do a search for some interesting blogs and leave comments (15 mins)
  • Have a look at what your competitors are doing with their social media (10 mins)

 

2)      Put aside 1 hour and blitz ideas on content

This depends a bit on how your mind works. If you are like me, you work well to some focussed time thinking about a specific task or challenge, so having time out to sit and scribble ideas down is really beneficial.

If you have the type of brain where ideas and creative ideas ‘pop up’ at random, then make sure you carry around a notepad or use your phone to capture these ideas and thoughts.

Whichever method you use, time invested in creating content will reap rewards and feed the ‘social media beast’ in the future. This also doesn’t need to be done in your ‘working day’ it may be that finding some quite time early morning, in the evening or weekends can be productive.

Use this time to create content and formulate your ideas and strategy. You can set up to be published throughout the week so take the pressure off posting every day (using social media tools)

 

3)      Use social media monitoring and management tools

There are many social media management tools out there that are free and easy to use. Common ones include Tweet deck , Hoot suite , Bufferapp and Social Bro . Find one which suits you and it can save time and make managing multiple accounts and platforms childsplay.

 

4)      Make sure you monitor the things you need to respond to

Be timely and respond to comments, mentions and RT’s. Again use things such as tweet deck, hoot suite so you can monitor mentions and retweets or set up so these prompt an email so you can respond quickly.

For things like Facebook this is very important as people expect there to be someone there to answer or make comment. This is where accessing via your phone can be very helpful.

 

5)      Look at setting up your social media accounts so they update each other.

Just be a little cautious with this though especially with twitter that can easily ‘fill up’ a Facebook or LinkedIn feed with what looks like an overload of messages and can become irritating for your followers and fans.

 

6)      Utilise your other activities (don’t treat social media as separate)

Make sure you have your social media links etc on email footers, stationery, business cards literature. This will get you some background traffic to your social media platforms with no effort past the initial set up.

 

7)      Pimp and amplify your content

You don’t always need to be starting from scratch. Have you held an event you could post some slides from, or a video?

Could you string a few blogs together to form a chunky guide or white paper?

Could you update an old blog with fresh content or perspective?

You can even repost old articles and blogs if they are still appropriate.

 

8)      Don’t let yourself be distracted by social media.

It can be addictive and more compelling than some of the other things on your things to do list. If you really enjoy social media then ‘reward yourself’ with 15 minutes after you have completed a specific task.

If you find it a chore, then schedule in time when you ‘make yourself do it’

 

9)      Find someone who can show you

Like most things, if you don’t know the tools and techniques even the simplest of tasks can become difficult and time consuming. So if you are like me and work better when shown something, then see if you have friends or colleagues who are using social media well and ask if they can spend half an hour showing you the ropes or answering your questions.

Keep your eye out for events around social media that can give you valuable insights and tips and you can even receive some 1-2-1 training from professional companies (such as us!)

 

For me, it provides me with a sophisticated marketing tool that I can dip in and out of. It social media isn’t the panacea or the golden goose, but it is something that most business can make work for them if they approach it the right way.

So don’t be daunted by it, allocate a bit of time and have a go!

Thanks to the people who contributed their tips from my twitter shout out.