It is difficult to juggle the responsibility of being a small business owner and all of the minute daily tasks that encompass a day. It’s important for you to balance the time you’re spending on daily social media maintenance and other routine marketing components. The following tips have been gathered from expert sources and our own experience, to help you manage the balance between marketing your business to the public and running your business:
1. Prepare a content calendar: While social media posts should be short and appealing, they can take up valuable time you could be using to gain more clientele. What hashtags should I use? How short/long should I make this post? Is there a certain time that works better for my audience? What graphics should accompany my writing? Would this be better suited as a blog? All these questions flood your brain at once, causing you to feel you’re on a constant roller-coaster of re-evaluating your business priorities. 70% of marketers lack a consistent content strategy! This is where content calendars come in. As an entrepreneur, your time is of the essence. In order to ensure your posts are of quality and engaging the right customers at the right time, setting aside time to plan out your posts at the beginning of a period, season, or month can save you time later. With platforms like Tweet Deck and the ability to schedule Facebook posts for the future, the process of automating these posts, simplifies your time. For instance, Amaniac Design posts a “Marketing Tip Monday” every week to engage our audience with the type of work we do. Selecting one day a week to post content that enhances brand awareness for your business and gives outsiders an inside look at how you can fulfill their needs is beneficial to your business. Give it a cool name and hashtag to streamline your posts and make sure you do the same for your blog articles, keeping in mind that the information you post is relevant to your audience.
2. Segment your audience: Would you talk to your teenage daughter the way you’d talk to your elderly grandmother? We didn’t think so. When it comes to marketing, it’s imperative to keep your audience in mind. Almost 60% of what makes content effective is its relevancy to the audience. Don’t spend money on platforms your audience doesn’t use. Make sure to boost your posts if possible on the platforms your audience does use in order to maximize your reach. Narrowing your channels and platforms will translate to less time and money spent in areas your audience doesn’t exist! Make sure you’re authentic with your writing style on each platform. Research suggests that people react better to content that is more conversational because it relates to them more. Try to write the way you would explain to someone in person and don’t waste your time trying to use words and phrases that would belong in an English Literature thesis.
3. Schedule your time accordingly: There is no golden rule for how much time should be spent on social media or in content development. This is all subject to the type of business you operate. Some businesses require more marketing around specific seasons like the holidays, while some are constantly running promotions relevant to other events. Which ever the case may be, don’t spend too much time obsessing over whether your blog article or Facebook post is perfect. Whether you commit to a content calendar or set apart an hour a day for content creation, it is important to dedicate 10-20 minutes a day to checking and filtering through your platforms. Be sure to “like” and/or reply to compliments that your customers gave your business, address negative feedback in a positive light, and answer any questions your customers may have. Over half of customers who leave a bad review expect a response from your business as soon as possible. Quick responses are the key to effective and relevant communication. Personalize your marketing efforts in a way your competitors don’t and remember, a few minutes a day could save you trouble later.
4. Analyze your Data: Over 60% of marketing executives agree that data-driven marketing is important. After certain campaigns or promotions run, it is important that you take the time to analyze data from these efforts accordingly. Using tools like Google Analytics and Google AdWords allows you to gain a closer look at audience behavior and activity. Having a known presence across social media platforms and syncing the data across these platforms by implementing tags, etc., allows you to more easily monitor where your audience engagement is coming from and make strategic decisions from there. This makes clear what is working and what is not, so you can use your time more efficiently to allocate resources to those platforms that are benefiting you most. Remember that marketing is instrumental in your growth as a business, so it is crucial to consistently re-evaluate, re-analyze, strategize, and track your next steps from there.
5. Streamline Your Processes: Over 70% of companies attribute content marketing to increasing lead quality and quantity, so it is important you engage in it efficiently. When it comes to re-vamping your marketing efforts, it is initially more time-consuming to set everything up. Marketing plans require constant analyses and changes but if done properly, can increase cost efficiency, while saving time. If your business has certain consistently active seasons during the year and you tend to repeat sales efforts and promotions around the same time yearly, then once that initial year passes successfully, you will be steps ahead in you marketing efforts for next year! Streamlining your processes ensures that routine tasks become second nature and when approached with having to complete tasks of a similar nature, the response becomes automatic. For instance, if there is a certain process you have for brainstorming ideas, writing a blog, and finding corresponding images, make sure you follow it every time. If you invest in paid advertising, make sure your process for keyword selection and ad creation is established. Having an order and process to follow saves you time in the long run.
All in all, there are several aspects of marketing that can be simplified in order to save time. Of course, certain seasons will require more marketing effort, but daily marketing tasks can rake up time! Simplify the process with the tips above and contact Amaniac Design to help make your marketing objectives a reality.
Sources used: Entrepreneur, Steadfast