Time-Saving Social Media Tactics as a Busy Entrepreneur #229

When an overwhelmed online business owner attempts to balance content creation and marketing with living their life, they find an unlikely solution in utilizing social media scheduling tools, batching tasks, and repurposing content to build a personality-driven marketing machine.

Table of Contents

Here’s what I cover:

How to authentically automate your content marketing to build up your know, like and trust factor with an engaged audience.
How to save time and money on social media tools and techniques like scheduling, content curation, and batching similar tasks.
How to manage real-time interactions on social media to preserve the quality of your interactions.

Listen to this episode on:

Highlights in this episode:

[00:00:06] We’re going to talk about time saving social media techniques for busy entrepreneurs.

[00:02:01] Will scheduling and content tools cost a little bit of money? They will. But this money that you spend on these particular tools has so much ROI.

[00:04:33] Batching cuts down on my context switching, therefore, it saves me productivity and efficiency.

[00:06:22] One of the biggest time-saving things you can do is recycle published content. Understanding the Content ROI and the content insights about your business come into play.

[00:08:19] Mastering social media as a business owner does not mean you’re a hostage to it.

[00:10:44] Staying consistent on social media is easier when you remember you’re in business to make a difference. Your people want your voice.

Time-Saving Social Media Techniques for Busy Entrepreneurs

This is a continuation of our End the Social Media Busy Work series. Did you catch the first article?

Use social media scheduling and content curation tools

Social media scheduling and content curation tools are essential if you don’t want your business to run your life. For any business or organization looking to use social media as part of its content system, these tools save immense amounts of time.

Schedulers automate posting to every social media channel, allowing you to create and post graphics, videos, articles, and other posts all at once instead of manually doing it. Some, like Buffer, can automate Instagram carousels and tweet threads, even beyond normal post styles–another big time saver. Others will send you a notification for these special posts and you’ll have to be more hands-on. Managing multiple social media platforms is easier than ever. Other tools I’ve used in the past for myself or clients: Edgar, Planoly, Later, and Facebook’s own Creator Studio.

Content curation is a valuable perspective apart from your normal content, and using a scheduler can help reign in the time spent on each platform. Tailwind is a popular Pinterest app that makes curating others’ content a breeze.

If you’re looking to maximize your time spent on social media management, be sure to incorporate a scheduler so you can manage social media accounts all in one place. Not having to move from site to site will save you another passel of time.

Batch similar social media tasks

Social media tasks can be tricky to manage, especially when it’s regular posting that requires input from others. A simple example: we can’t publish the show notes for a podcast episode until we get the audio back from the editor.

To run with my podast as the example, I write the show notes, social media captions, and email to my list all in one session. Same with the graphics–I’m currently making them and I pull the quotes and make the quote graphics at the same time as the episode artwork.

This works best when you have a large number of content tasks that need to be completed on a regular basis, which is another plug for having regular weekly content scheduled out in advance! You’re creating your episode thumbnails at some point, so why not make all four for next month at the same time since you already have your template open?

Batching similar social media tasks together will ensure that you stay organized and efficient with your social media marketing strategies, saving you both time and money.

Recycle published content

Recycling your content is a great way to save time and multiply your efforts when it comes to content creation. It’s also one of the best ways to shed the content creation hamster wheel–for good. I’ve covered this in a full episode on myths and methods of repurposing, which can help you understand how to choose the right content to repurpose and reuse.

To get the most out of these efforts, it’s essential to know which content has done well for your business. This is where understanding the content ROI and insights come into play as they can help you determine which pieces of content should be recycled, repurposed or reused for future campaigns.

I include Content Insights reports for all of my clients on extended service with me and for the first month of implementation for Content ROI Dashboard clients–so they can learn how to read and take proper action from their data. I want you to know how to turn your numbers into better content and time-saving endeavors.

Manage real-time interactions wisely

Managing real-time interactions wisely involves showing up with a spark of service, but it doesn’t mean being everywhere, all the time. It’s important to set aside specific times for online tasks and be mindful of how much time you spend on social media. Mastering social media as a business owner does not mean you’re a hostage.

You also need boundaries when interacting with people online; users don’t get to demand your time or expect an immediate response from you. I haven’t seen enough people talk about this. I’m happy to answer questions any time on my time.

The best approach is to create a schedule that works best for you and stick to it so that you can manage your time effectively. For example, if you are available for chats between 9 am-10 am every day, let people know this in advance so they can plan accordingly. Showing respect for yourself by setting limits will help preserve the quality of the real-time interactions that you choose to engage in.

Set aside 10 minutes a day.

Being on social media means, well, you have to actually BE on social media. Scheduling out posts and not spending any time on the platform won’t net results the way it did in 2017.

Set aside ten minutes a day to reply to messages and comments. Use the remaining time after you finish that to comment on other industry colleagues. Not direct competitors necessarily, but people who also serve your audience. When you see someone you align with, see if they’re open to a coffee chat. Or tea chat, if you’re like me!

Remember Why You’re On Social

If you’re not willing to invest ten minutes a day interacting with your online presence, I think it’s time to ask yourself–are you coming from a place of service?

When I got into business originally, it was because I had friends and colleagues who noticed I was really at a particular thing. They asked me to do it for them, then encouraged me to go official with it. Most people I know have a similar story. I saw how well I could help people and I wanted that–to help people. And of course, I wanted to get paid to do so.

But it’s so easy to lose that initial spark.

Staying consistent on social media is so much easier when you remember you’re in business to make a difference, to begin the ripple of helping people. Your people want YOUR voice. They want to see your message. And since it’s a noisy, distracting world, when you’re showing up consistently it’s so much easier to serve your audience and truly help them.

Your voice matters. And your voice will make an impact if you show up with strategic content and then hone in on that strategy and put it all together so that you can finally get some evergreen magic from your content. That evergreen ROI is available to you when you find a way to shed the spray and pray posting–you know, this spaghetti on the wall of stuff. And when you really show up as yourself, putting those three things together, that is what’s going to end the social media busy work for you.

But until you get those three things in balance:

strategic content,
showing up with your whole self and
honing in an actual strategy that you’ve measured and proven that works,

The social media busy work will continue to rear its ugly head until you get these three things locked and solid.

If you want a personality-driven marketing machine like we’ve been talking about here, this is what I do for my clients.

I help them create a sustainable social media plan they can use in an evergreen fashion between launches–and know that they are constantly building their audience pool with people who want to be a part of their community, a real community of people who can help each other. That’s what we do. If that’s the next step for your business, I invite you to set up a time to chat with me.