Many small businesses don’t have the time or resources to manage their social media accounts, let alone the budget to hire a dedicated social media manager.
But that doesn’t make social media management any less important. People expect to be able to connect with businesses on social channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even TikTok. Without an active presence, your company could be forgotten, lost customers to the competition, or worse, appear negligent.
Also, you may be missing out on new customers. More than 40% of digital shoppers use social media to research new brands and products.
We have prepared an 18-minute plan for those with limited time. This plan takes you through the minute on social needs and highlights time-saving tips along the way.
If you have more time to socialize, use it. But for those who don’t know, here’s how to make the most of every minute.
Social media plan for 18 minutes a day
Here’s a minute-by-minute look at how to stay on top of social media.
Minutes 1-5: Social listening
Start with five minutes devoted to social listening. What is social listening? In simple terms, it involves watching the conversations people have on social media about your business niche.
This includes keywords, hashtags, sayings and messages for your brand and your competitors. There are tools that make tracking a whole lot easier (*cough* Moyens I/O).
In Moyens I/O, you can set up streams to monitor all your social channels from a single dashboard. This saves you from having to manually search for keywords and phrases by channel. It also makes it easier for you to interact later.
Here are a few things to check and take note of every day:
- People talking about your brand
- People who talk about your product or service
- Certain hashtags and/or keywords
- Competitors and partners
- Industry news and trends
If your business has a physical location or storefront, use geo search to filter local conversations. This will help you focus on customers close to you and the local issues they care about.
Fly: If you have extra time to invest upfront, take our free Social Listening with Moyens I/O Streams course to save more time in the long run.
Minutes 5-10: Analyze and plan
Take another five minutes to analyze your findings. Doing so will help you fine-tune your social listening process and marketing efforts. Here are some aspects to keep in mind:
Sensuality
Emotion is a good place to start. How are people talking about your brand? How does it compare to how they talk about your competitors? If things are mostly positive, that’s great. If it’s negative, start thinking of ways to steer the conversation in a more positive direction.
Feedback
Do your customers have specific feedback about your business? Look for recurring trends and insights that you can take action on.
For example, if you run a restaurant and many people think the music is loud, turn the volume down. If you’re offering a product like gym bands and customers are interested in more color options, you’ve spotted a new sales opportunity.
trends
What are the current trends in your industry? Identifying them can help you identify new niches and audiences to engage with. Or maybe they can inspire content for your next marketing campaign. Better still, perhaps they will inform the development of a new product or service.
purchase intention
Social media listening doesn’t just involve watching conversations from existing customers. It can also help you find new customers. Keep track of phrases or topics potential customers might use when they’re in the market for your offer.
For example, if your company is a travel provider, you may want to monitor for keywords like “winter blues” and “holidays” in January.
updates
Did you notice a new keyword popping up? Or you may have noticed a common typo when people mention your brand. Maybe a new opponent has entered the field of play. Be mindful of what you need to add to your social media listening watchlist.
Minutes 10-12: Check your content calendar
Check your content calendar to see what you plan to post for the day. Double check that images, photos and copies are available for use. Make sure you always make one last correction to spot any last-minute typos.
Hopefully you already have a social media marketing plan and content calendar. If you don’t, plan to devote about an hour each month to brainstorming and crafting ideas and to fill your calendar.
Whether you outsource content creation, use free tools, or do everything yourself, having a solid strategy makes social media management so much easier.
Fly: If you don’t have the time or budget for high production content, consider user-generated content, memes, or quick and beautiful images.
Minutes 12-13: Program
With the right tools, it will only take a minute to schedule your posts. All you have to do is add your content, choose the time you want to publish it, and schedule it.
These tools are especially useful if you want to post content when you’re on vacation or unavailable. With Moyens I/O, you can schedule several posts in advance, so you only need to do it once a week (giving you more time to do the next task on this list: Engage).
Schedule your post for when people are most likely to be online. In general, Moyens I/O research finds that the best time to post on social media is between 9am and 12pm EST. However, this may vary from platform to platform. And of course, depending on where your target audience is.
Check the best times and days to post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn.
Fly: Use analytics to see when your audience is also usually online. It may differ from the world average.
13-18. Minute: Interaction
Before logging out, take time to interact with customers. Answer questions, like comments and share posts. The more active you are, the more likely people are to interact with you.
The more positive the experience, the more likely people are to buy from you and recommend your business. In fact, over 70% of consumers who have a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to refer the brand to their friends and family.
Yes and yes!!!!
– Netflix (@netflix) January 15, 2020
You can create templates for common responses to save time. These are especially helpful when you realize you’re sharing the same specific details, such as opening hours or return policies.
But don’t overuse generalizing answers. People appreciate authenticity and want to feel like a real person is interacting with them. Even something as simple as leaving a customer service representative’s initials in answers increases consumer goodwill.
Fly: Whenever possible, try to engage shortly after posting something. If you got the timing right, then your target audience will be online and engaging. This way, you also get a good response time.
Looking for more time-saving social media tools? These 9 social media templates will save you hours of work.
Use Moyens I/O to schedule all your social media posts, engage your followers, and measure performance; do it all in 18 minutes a day. Sign up today.
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