Shave Hours Off Your Social Media Marketing with these 5 Tips

Up to 94 percent of all small to medium business owners in the United States are leveraging social media for marketing what they have to offer to their audience. There are quite a few that are doing this extremely successfully. In fact, up to 60 percent of all the businesses embracing social media have claimed that this marketing has helped them acquire new customers.

In fact, the more success your business has, the better you are likely going to be at social media marketing. According to a recent study:

• 91 percent of businesses increased their brand awareness
• 82 percent generated more (new) leads

However, if you are just now beginning a social media marketing, it can be overwhelming and frustrating. In fact, you have likely found that to get any traction at all, you are having to spend hour after hour finding content, posting content and responding to comments.

The good news is there are a number of steps you can take – 5 in fact – to help and minimize the amount of time you spend on your social media marketing efforts.

Keep in Touch with the Trends

In order to be relevant on social media, you have to know what is going on in the world. If you create content around popular topics, then you will receive more attention and more likes and shares. There are a few tools that can make this easier, including BrandWatch and Google Trends. In fact, these provide up to the minute information about what people are talking about online.

 

Outsource the Copy

As a business owner, you can’t expect to do it all on your own. There are simply not enough hours in the day. Once you have figured out what you want to post about, then you can lighten the load by getting someone else to actually do it.

You can source quality freelancers from a number of different sites where you can look at their work prior to contacting them. Take some time to find someone who knows how to create quality content and then let them take over social media posts. This is an affordable and effective option for engaging your audience on social media.

 

Curation is not Shameful

Not every single piece of content you produce needs to be completely unique. Some of the most ‘viral’ content on social media just happens to be repins, retweets, posts that are shred and created by someone else. When you curate content that your specific audience can relate to or appreciate, you will reduce the time you have to spend on this effort and reduce your total content creation expenses.

 

Recycle and Refurbish Posts

Just like the planet prefers using recycled materials instead of new ones, the star posts that were seen in the past have already proven their worth and have created a great audience that loves them.

Don’t overdo it, but you can selectively take old content and repost it. After the relevant changes have been made to the post to refresh it, you will give it new life and make it popular all over again.

 

Ask for Contributions from Users

When you have users engaged with your brand, they can be the ideal candidate to create new content. Be sure to solicit content – product reviews, images and articles – from users and then give them credit on your social networks. You will receive free content and your users will receive their 15 minutes of fame.

Social media is only as hard as you make it. When you take the time to use the modern tools that are available and other efficient methods, you will find creating effective social media posts can actually be fun and easy.

 

The Top 9 Social Networks For Your Business

*source: Pinterest

 

Do you have any favorite tools? Post in the comments below