Tiffany Winbush is the Social Media Manager for Hiscox USA insurance, responsible for driving social media engagement and publishing the Hiscox Small Business blog. Tiffany lives in NYC with her tech entrepreneur husband and one year-old daughter. She is passionate about empowering women and girls and volunteers regularly with the over 100 year-old public service organization Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Tweet Tiffany at @TiffanyPR.
Your small business needs a social media strategy. Point. Blank. Period.
It’s no secret that social media can magnify a small businesses online presence. And maybe you know you need to focus on social media, but with client work, business development, managing staff and everything else you’re responsible for, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time.
So, how can you conquer this highly impactful marketing strategy without neglecting other parts of your business? Here are five tips for saving time with social media.
Plan ahead. You might feel like you’re wasting time planning and not jumping into social media headfirst. But, planning now will save you a lot of time later.
- You can’t be everywhere. Determine where your customers are and focus on establishing a presence on those social networks.
- Determine who will represent your brand online. Is it yourself, an internal employee or an outside consultant?
- Will your online voice be friendly, formal or a combination of both? You’ll need to decide based on what fits best with your overall brand image.
Curate content. Keeping your followers and fans interested is important. Making them aware of your products or services is a primary focus, but you don’t want to over sell them by only sharing your content. That’s just advertising and people won’t be attracted. Use a new aggregation tool such as Flipboard to find content your followers and fans will find interesting.
Create a content calendar. Now that you’ve curated content to share, create a social media content calendar detailing what you’ll post on each platform and on what day and time. In the beginning, use this handy infographic, which details the best time to post on social media. Once you’ve established a social media presence, begin using the analytics available from each social media network that tells you the best time for content to reach your fans and followers.
Schedule updates. You have a business to run, so you can’t spend the majority of your day updating your social media accounts. Use services such as HootSuite to schedule messages and ensure your small business has a social media presence throughout the day.
Focused engagement. Social media isn’t just about distributing content, it’s also about engagement. Engage with followers, but make sure it’s focused. Schedule a set time in the morning, afternoon and evening to send follow up messages and make new connections.
Implementing these tips will have you on your way to establishing a solid social media presence for your small business and leave you enough time to run it.
Do you have any time saving tips that may be helpful to other small business owners? I’d enjoy hearing from you. Share your tips in the comments section below.
