Social media is a necessity for marketing your business in 2017, but for the small business solopreneur or compact team it presents certain challenges.
Speak in your brand
Don’t waste time on confuse your customers or clients by speaking in the wrong persona. Get your business head on before you tackle your business emails and social media engagement, and keep on brand in your replies. A short focused period will pay dividends, which brings us on to our next point.
Keep your personal social media separate from your business
Don’t check personal emails or social media platforms in your work time. Build a time for this into your day (for example, half an hour at lunchtime) and keep to that time.
Don’t get sucked into the black hole of social media
While checking your business social media platforms, don’t get sucked into that black hole! Of course you’re going to spot that fascinating Ted Talk or that article about Pippa Middleton’s wedding (delete as required!) but stay on topic and save the article to read later. (More on great apps for this in the next blog.)
Work at the optimum time for you
If you’re a writer and you know that you work best in the early morning, make sure this is the time that you write and don’t do anything else. Don’t answer that non-urgent call, don’t check your emails, don’t open the post, don’t empty the dishwasher. Those things all need to be done, but not at a time when you will get most of your writing done.
Stop procrastinating
We work much better if we take quick decisions and act on them. How many times have you been meaning to do something, put it off and then felt too tired or unmotivated to do it? This is what psychologist Roy F. Baumeister calls Decision Fatigue. When you have spent all day making little decisions you don’t have the will power to make the big ones. Do the important stuff first.
Involve your team
If you have a team, get them involved in the business of social media. Get them sharing posts and engaging, and introduce fun incentives for them to do so. This will build your brand AND take some of the pressure of you to create engagement on your social media platforms all the time.
Stop multitasking
According to a Business Insider survey only 2% of the population can multi task successfully. The rest of us end us confused and cluttered. Instead, write daily short to do lists which can be covered productively and take breaks in between (apps for this coming in the next blog.)
Cut down on meetings
Too much time is wasted in and on the way to meetings. Instead, try to use messaging or a system like Slack which can be integrated for your whole team.
Be consistent
Many small business owners post sporadically on social media when they can spare a moment, but actually the algorithms of almost all the major platforms favour consistency, and so do your followers. To achieve this, you may find it best to use one of the many scheduling tools which will allow you to plan your posts and send them out at optimum times which might otherwise be inconvenient for you. They also allow you to repost articles which have a bit more life in them very easily. More about these scheduling tools in our blog here.
Use curated as well as created content
Creating content is a big time drain. You don’t need to create original content all the time, in fact it’s best to use a mix of curated and created content. Make sure that you link to the author’s social media platforms in the hope that they will repost and increase engagement on your platforms.
Blogs for productivity
We don’t recommend that you read these when you are supposed to be doing something else (remember that procrastination we talked about?!), but some productivity blogs can give you some great tips to move forward. Here are a few of the best:
The Four Hour Work Week with Tim Ferriss
If you would like to read more of our blogs, we’d be very happy! You can do that here.
Recent Comments