Social media is a bit like Marmite. You either love it or (kind of) hate it! I hear this a lot from the amazing women I work with, as well as through the grapevine. I personally love social media and really enjoy helping my clients navigate themselves around it.
Am I on social media 24/7 as a result though? Absolutely not! I have a successful business to run, my son to look after, and all those other juggles that being a busy working mum brings. No, I’m way smarter with my social media management than that!
If you’re finding you don't have time to post consistently on social media, don't worry. It’s not just you! While apps like Facebook and Instagram can be addictive, with their pesky notifications enticing you to have a quick peek, as business owners, we need to be shrewd, so we can work effectively and spend our time productively.
In this blog, I’d like to share my top 5 tips to make your life a little easier and help you create a better relationship with your business social media accounts.
1. Make social media one of your tasks
My first expert tip is to treat social media as you would any of your other work-related tasks. By this, I mean view it as a regular piece of work that must be completed as efficiently as possible. For example, imagine you were writing a blog or an email newsletter. You’d open the relevant app, complete the job at hand and come straight out of it so that you could get on with the next thing on your to-do list. You wouldn’t stay in there and start browsing around the app, would you? So, you should adopt a similar, strict routine with your social media accounts too. In a nutshell, spend the minimum amount of time in there!
2. Note ideas
Next, create a bank of ideas. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy. It might be a list on your phone, or I like to use Trello - a simple, flexible tool for organising plans and projects. When inspiration strikes (usually just as we’re falling asleep!), or when you spot some eye-catching, engaging posts you’d like to reproduce, quickly jot them down or save them for later. Then, when it comes to your planning, you can easily refer back to them and you’re not starting from scratch.
3. Fail to plan, plan to fail
Do you find yourself throwing things up on social media because you panic that you haven’t shared anything for a few days or weeks? Don’t worry. We’ve all been there at some point. If this is how you usually operate, it’s time to create a plan! Set some time aside to work out which platforms are really working for your business, the types of content your audience engage with and how often you’re going to show up. Again, this doesn’t have to be anything fancy or over the top. It could be notes in a paper diary or something online. The main thing is to have clarity on what you’re aiming for. Once you’ve got that, your content creation will be quicker and more purposeful.
4. Define your content pillars
Content pillars (also known as content buckets) are a quick and easy way of organising your content topics, with the sole aim of making them as exciting and engaging as possible. Your content pillars should be based around three or four key areas that demonstrate your niche, talk to your ideal clients and help resolve the key issues they may be facing. Examples of content that will then fall into your pillars may include product or service demos, customer testimonials, ‘behind the scenes’ info to build rapport with your audience, motivational topics, FAQs etc.
5. Batch create your content
My final tip is to set aside some time each week or month to focus solely on your content creation, and more importantly, to stick to it! I think this helps because you can definitely get in the ‘zone’ and see the bigger picture, rather than spending a few minutes here and there, getting distracted and failing to create a cohesive message. If you’ve also developed some branded templates, then plugging in motivational quotes, questions or top tips becomes a doddle and takes next to no time at all!
Find these tips helpful?
If you found these top tips useful, then come and join the Social Media Content Planning Masterclass! By the end of this amazing training, you'll know how to generate ideas easily and have a system in place so that you can schedule your posts for the month ahead!
Hopefully see you there!
Emma x