Most marketers view social media as a must-have strategy, because it produces results. A disadvantage is that it can become an enormous time sink.
Almost two-thirds (63%) of marketers use social media six hours or more per week and almost 1 in 5 spend more than 20 hours per week on social media, according to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Social Media Examiner. That’s a lot of time.
Most everyone who markets on social media would like to accomplish more in less time. These recommendations from leading social media experts will help you save time on social media marketing activities.
Use automation software. Tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite and HubSpot can schedule posts in the future. Apps such Zapier and IFTTT can automatically post WordPress blogs to social media accounts. Such automation software tools are often free for introductory features but carry fees for more advanced features. Beware of some automated practices, however. Following complaints of fake news and bots, social media networks have cracked down on some automated practices. For instance, Twitter forbids automated direct messages, or DMs, except in certain situations.
Create a plan and content schedule. A plan establishes who you’re trying to reach, what you want to accomplish, and what set of social tactics best fit your goals. A social media content schedule helps create consistency, fill in any content gaps, and determine what works and what doesn’t work for your audience. “Trying to build a brand on social media without a defined social media strategy can be really counterproductive and a waste of time,” warns social media consultant Dhariana Lozano. “You’ll find yourself just posting to post, with no rhyme or reason which leads to seeing no return from social media marketing.”
Go mobile. With a smart device, you can post social media content from almost any place with an internet connection. You no longer have to be at your computer. Use apps like Feedly for curating content, the Hootsuite app to manage your content, and PicStitch to create collages to share immediately with your social networks, suggests Kristen Curtiss, social media specialist at Constant Contact. Apps like Pocket let you store content you find online in one place, until you’re ready to share it.
“With these apps in your back pocket, you will find your busy day a little more relaxing,” Curtiss says. “Knowing that you no longer have to carve out time to schedule social media content will give your extra time to be more engaged once your followers start to interact with your content.”
Use a social media monitoring & measurement service. Searching manually for multiple keywords across multiple social networks to find mentions about your organization can consume substantial time. An automated social media monitoring and measurement service is more thorough than manual monitoring and produces detailed measurement data on viewership, engagement, lead generation, and much more. PR and marketing pros can also set up alerts for mentions of their brand name, products and industry news on the social media listening tool.
“These alerts can act as inspiration for new social media posts, or you can even just directly share news or links as they happen. Either way, this strategy will undoubtedly save you time and effort!” says social media consultant Kim Garst, CEO at KG Enterprises.
Examine data. Analyzing data is crucial for prioritizing networks and type of content. However, constantly checking the numbers and running reports can devour time. Resist the urge to check your statistics every hour. Instead, set regular times to analyze social media marketing results. Weekly and monthly reports provide the best perspective.
Post less frequently. Consider posting less frequently. Posting not more than you need to could create considerable time savings – though “need to” is difficult to define. It’s possible that you could gain the marketing benefits and outcomes after reducing posting volume by 20% or even 50%. If you start losing audience or engagement, you’re probably not posting frequently enough or material that is interesting enough in meeting your audience’s needs. Regularly checking social media data from you media monitoring service will tip you off to any audience losses you may incur.
Drop networks. Posting less frequently – or even stopping — to platforms that are not producing favorable results – can help focus your efforts. The best social media strategy is to focus on two or three networks. Don’t feel obligated to dedicate equal time to each. Marketers usually have a favorite network where they are more productive and where their audience demographics produce better results.
Repurpose. Repurposing blog articles into social media posts can streamline your workflow, advises Julia Angelen Joy, PR expert at Z Group PR. Shorten a long blog post into a thought leadership piece for LinkedIn, with a link to the original blog post. Place a summary on Facebook and link to the article. For Instagram, post the best photo, with hashtags and a provocative sentence from the post in the caption. Direct followers to a “link in bio.”
Republish old posts. Republishing content is an enormous time saver. Most of your followers almost certainly didn’t see the initial post, so you’re doing them a favor by republishing it. “If you’re like many business owners, you might assume you can only post the same content once. This couldn’t be further from the truth,” Garst asserts. “Republishing old content can save you a ton of time, and can give your old stuff a new lease on life.” One strategy: Repost your most popular content.
Many social media experts recommend reposting only high-quality content at different times of the day and tweaking the wording or hashtags of posts.
Curate. Post content produced by others. Sharing content from others make your accounts more interesting and saves time while delivering additional value to your audience. User-generated content can be an enormously effective – yet affordable – marketing strategy. Amplifying photos, videos or recommendations of other consumers offers a superior strategy, since consumers are increasingly skeptical of brand advertising and marketing.
Bottom Line: Marketing on social media can quickly drain away valuable time if you’re not careful. These tips will help you use your time more effectively. An important guiding principal is to strive to “work smarter” and post high quality content on selected networks as opposed to pumping out voluminous posts on the full range of social networks.
This article was first published on Dec. 8, 2015, and updated on Sept. 30, 2019.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
Cool article, William! Hootsuite, Buffer and Canva help me out in my social media efforts a lot.
Great Post! Also, I would like to suggest SocialPilot (https://socialpilot.co/) for scheduling social media posts across multiple social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and much more. It allows calendar feature so you can easily plan and visualize your content marketing strategies in advance. Really it is a user-friendly and time-saving tool for all marketer.
Examining data can save you a ton of time, because you will learn where you really should focus your efforts. You can see what’s working and what isn’t and focus on what to work on from that knowledge. Thanks for sharing this!
I think it is also important to periodically check your home feed on social media sites and look for opportunities to interact with people. Maybe it’s less important for a large corporation than for small businesses or individual artists… I don’t know. It’s not the same as responding to questions and complaints. I try to make sure that I actually nurture my social media connections, so that people know it’s a real person behind the account and not a robot. I myself follow only a handful of accounts where almost all communication (tweets, posts, etc) is obviously automated. It’s kind of a turn off.
Sometimes you need to trade in some “efficiency” for “social interaction,” and I think that’s healthy 🙂