Many business owners recognize the need to be on social media, and feel it is an important way to grow their business and their online reputation.
But as the day gets busy, problems, issues or conflicts that arise may take priority on a business owner’s precious time. It becomes more and more of a challenge to fit social media into the workday. Although social media is important, it may understandably need to take a back seat to pressing issues and deadlines.
So with all the responsibilities business owners juggle every day, how can they ensure they are allocating enough time to developing and maintaining their social media presence on a consistent schedule?
Here are five steps business owners can take to help organize, prioritize and fit social media tasks into their busy workday.
- Recognize the importance of social media. Social media is a business task. When it comes to your business, it’s necessary to spend a reasonable amount of time on social media because it helps to grow your business. You are taking a very strategic approach to posting, listening and sharing important information your customers will want to know about. It’s a valuable use of your time.
- Dedicate a specific time or day to developing your social media presence. Maybe it’s first thing in the morning, maybe it’s 15 minutes after lunch, or maybe Tuesdays are slower and you have more time to devote to social media. Whatever your situation is, decide what day or time you will be focusing on social media and stick with it. Turn off your phone, close out other windows on your computer, and use your time efficiently to post, respond, comment or increase your followers.
- Develop a content calendar to plan your posts. Knowing what you are going to post in advance will save you a lot of time. At the end of each week, make a social media posting plan for the upcoming week with posts, links to articles you find helpful, or statuses you know are coming up. This will help make your dedicated social media time more efficient.
- Save shareable articles. Create a bookmark folder in your browser for articles you want to share with your followers at a later time. It’s fine to share articles immediately, but if you want to be more strategic about your posts, saving the articles to a designated folder can help to keep you organized. Then you can share the article, write a thoughtful comment or summary, or take the opportunity to engage your followers on their thoughts about the article.
- Schedule your posts. Tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Buffer can help you streamline your updates and plan them, so your posts are going out throughout the day. Although it’s nice to post some things live, having scheduled posts can also help ensure you are updating your outlets consistently.
With a little bit of planning and organization, social media can be successfully integrated into your workday.
Over time, prioritizing your social media efforts will be rewarded with brand recognition, credibility and increased sales.
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