4 Tips to Streamline Social Media

Envision the pleasure of having a jumping-off point for a social media topic whenever you take a seat to write. It definitely beats looking at a blank screen or going down the bunny hole searching for curated material.

For blogs along with social media, that's the beauty of an editorial calendar. Take an hour to map out any seasonality in your company-- for instance, back to school for a clothing seller or business tax due dates for a CPA company.

Designate a seasonal subject to months where they fall, and strategy to compose or source social posts around that subject.

For months with no seasonality, pick another topic that showcases your proficiency. Using our CPA example, they could assign monetary wellness to January, earnings tax suggestions to February, year-end tax preparing to November ... you get the idea.

Short on topic ideas? Check sources like Holiday Insights for offbeat classifications you can use to fill in the blanks (National Deviled Egg Day, anybody?), or register for services like SmartBrief to find sharable third-party content that's relevant to your audience.

As copywriters, we constantly assume that "material" translates into "copy." That's absolutely not the case on social media. In reality, graphics = more eyeballs.

So be imaginative in turning your post copy-- whether that's an inspiring quote, a customer review, or something else-- into a visual.

We can hear the objections now. "But I'm not a graphic designer." That's where tools like Canva or Bannersnack can come in handy. Employ a graphic artist to set up design templates for various kinds of content that you can update and customize as needed.

Know how some business appear to be always on? The secret-- they're not posting live.  It's more likely these overachievers are making use of complimentary or low-cost tools like Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout Social to pre-schedule their posts ahead of time.

Of course, pre-scheduling doesn't mean set it and forget it. You still require to monitor and connect with followers, and share late-breaking material that does not allow scheduling ahead of time. However it can substantially cut down on the time you devote to publishing.

All of us understand life happens. Fires need to get put out, customers require hand-holding, payroll won't run itself.

Once again, consider social media as an organization process. Similarly, you wouldn't (or should not) delay regular monthly payroll,  provide yourself a due date for social postings. Block off 90 minutes the very first Friday of monthly (or whatever works for your organization) to produce and scheudle 4 weeks' worth of posts.  

With these 4 easy steps to social media marketing, what will you do with all your free time?