How to Stay Sane While Getting Social
February 24, 2020
Managing social media can sometimes feel like pulling your hair out.
These days, every business needs some amount of social media marketing. Whether that marketing happens on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, or any other social media site is entirely up to you and dependent on in the industry you’re in and the people you want to connect with only.
There’s no doubt about just how essential it is to have a good social media management strategy in place. After all, social media offers two-way communication with customers and prospective customers, which is something no other form of digital marketing does quite so well. However, no one would ever pretend like social media management is easy.
Managing your business’ social media presence can be downright exhausting. It feels like you have to be everywhere at once — producing content, responding to and interacting with others, cultivating new followers, and planning out the future. And, it doesn’t make it any easier for small businesses that the social media landscape is ever-changing and be difficult to keep up with.
Let’s face it, social media management isn’t easy, but you’ll be glad to know that there are lots of things you can do to make it easier.
4 Tips for Staying Sane While Managing Social Media
#1. Make a plan.
When the time comes to post on Facebook or Instagram, do you find yourself spending an hour scrolling through your feed or searching the web for inspiration? If so, it’s a clear sign that you need to have a strategic plan in place. This will help to free up more of your time, and it will make it easier for you to decide what to post each day.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself before you start creating your social media strategy:
- What is your goal on social media — to get more followers, to entice more people to come to your website, etc?
- If you’re managing more than one social profile, is there one or two that are most essential for reaching your goal?
- Which social platform are your customers spending their time on?
- What are your customers and target audience talking about on social?
- What kind of information can you provide that will be a valuable resource for them?
- What kind of voice do you want to have on social media?
Once you know the answers to these questions, you can start putting together your social media management plan.
#2. Create a social media style guide.
When most people hear the term “style guide,” they think of website design, where a style guide can help designers keep a business’ branding consistent across a website, including the colors, typography, type of images used, etc. However, style guides can come in handy for far more than just website design. In fact, they play a key role in creating a more cohesive social media management strategy.
Your social media style guide will be your go-to resource for how your business looks and acts on social platforms. While as social media strategy will determine what kind of content you publish, your style guide will determine what that content should look like and what kind of voice you use.
You don’t have to post the same things — or even the same kinds of things — every day in order to maintain a consistent style, but it also shouldn’t feel like there are a dozen different people managing your social media presence. However, all of your posts, tweets, etc., should fit well with your brand and what you stand for.
#3. Build out a calendar.
If you expect inspiration to strike only when you sit down to post or manage your social media accounts, you’re going to have a long road ahead. The fact of the matter is that, you never know when a good idea might spark. That doesn’t mean that you need to drop everything you’re doing and go post it on Facebook right now, but if you don’t want to forget about it, you need to be able to jot it down to come back to later.
Having a calendar where you can quickly jot down inspiration as it strikes will help you avoid losing ideas you think of in the moment, and it will save you hours of time sitting around trying to think of something to post.
Another reason why it’s a good idea to have a calendar is to keep your social media schedule straight. For instance, if you have an event planned or a sale to announce, having a calendar in place will help you stay on schedule when it comes to posting about it.
#4. Find time to interact.
Too often, businesses are under the impression that social media management only consists of creating new posts. While posting consistently is certainly a big piece of the puzzle, it’s nowhere near the whole shebang. In fact, arguably the most important aspect of managing social media is interacting and engaging with your followers.
As I said, one of the biggest benefits of using social media is that it’s a two-way street for communication between your brand and your followers. And, when people interact with your brand on social media, it’s important that you pay them in kind.
While most businesses are great about scheduling out their time for posting and tweeting, too many only respond to or interact with their followers when they have a spare minute or two. But, it’s important that you dedicate the necessary time for interaction and engagement on social media. It’s something you should prioritize, and that means making time in your schedule.
Learning how to effectively manage your business’ social media presence is an important part of the digital marketing puzzle, and with so many balls in the air, it can get stressful. I hope that these tips will help you stay sane while efficiently building and maintaining your business’ presence across every social channel.
Even with excellent time management skills, social media management takes time and energy that many small business owners just don’t have to dedicate. If you’d like help, you’ve come to the right place. Learn about our social media management solutions today.
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