As an entrepreneur and small business owner, you are solely in charge with all the activities related to running a business: keeping the accounting records, building products and developing services, marketing them and finding customers. Through the use of social media, small businesses have found a cost-effective and efficient marketing channel to attract prospects and convince them to become clients.
However, an effective social media marketing strategy involves the use of multiple social media platforms, in an attempt to reach out to as many potential customers as possible. Whether you are just starting out in business, or you have gained some entrepreneurial experience, it is quite difficult to manage all these social media accounts, especially because you have to adapt the same content to the specifics of each particular channel.
This is why in today’s article we will discuss various ways in which you can manage your multiple social media accounts without having to spend too much time. Here are a few helpful tips to start running your social media marketing campaign without hassle:
1. Be Selective
In an ideal world, you are active on all social media platforms and can reach out to all your potential audiences. In the real world, this is extremely time-consuming and not very effective either. The reality is that a significant percentage of people have accounts or multiple social media accounts. This means that there are several overlapping audiences across social media channels, so you do not have to have an account on all the platforms.
It is much more effective to limit yourself to 2 or 3 networks, at least while your business is still small and run solely by you. Once you can afford to hire employees to deal with marketing, you may consider expanding to other channels. But for starters, it is quite sufficient to focus your social media marketing efforts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn or Instagram.
2. Repackage and Reuse Content
It is quite difficult to produce an endless stream of original content and adapt it to the various specifics of each social media channel. Indeed, even large companies, which hire teams of content writers, editors, social media managers and SEO specialists, go back to evergreen topics and repurpose them to be served once again to their audience.
For instance, a lengthy article containing various statistics can be turned into an engaging infographic or a detailed Slideshare presentation and shift focus from the initial subject matter to a sub-topic which you have identified while re-reading your older article.
3. Plan, Review and Execute
The best path towards success is by following a plan prepared ahead of time and reviewed along the way. This is why you made a business plan before you opened your business, and this is why you should prepare a social media marketing plan. In this plan, you will detail your posting and sharing schedule for each platform and determine the best times when your content should be published.
Having a clear posting schedule helps you prepare content ahead of time and automate your posting schedule. You can take advantage of spare moments and create or curate content and then find the best moments in your schedule when it should be posted across your social media platforms.
4. Use Social Media Management Tools
There are lots of social media management and automation tools which you can use, for an affordable fee. These tools, such as Buffer, Hootsuite, Sendible or Sprout Social, help you schedule your posts ahead of time across various social media platforms, identify influencers in your niche, and find curated content which you can share on your own accounts to grow your followers’ base.
These tools are also very useful for measuring the impact of your social media marketing activity, by giving you in-depth analytics reports and allowing you to see the exact numbers for each significant metric measuring the ROI of your marketing campaigns.
In these four simple ways, your work running various social media accounts will become simpler and more effective, helping you attain the expected results without wasting too much time.