With ½ hour a day to dedicate to social media, what should I do with that time?
This is a question I get asked frequently. “So, I have a full-time job to do already. If I have ½ hour a day to dedicate to social media, what should I do with that time?”
Of course you have a full-time job… you are running a business, which means you are making business decisions regarding direction and growth; and most likely, as a small to mid-sized business entrepreneur, you are also probably involved in the day-to-day activities in the business that keep it running as well. In fact most entrepreneurs have a hard time scheduling time to actually work ON their businesses rather than IN them.
So, with this question, I am assuming you already haave made the decision on which social media platform(s) you want to use to reach your target audience and have your business pages and profiles set up on these platforms.
So, in a month, what are the activities you need to accomplish to use social media for marketing your business to drive more leads and sales? This is the first thing you need to figure out.
Here is my list:
1. Write 2-4 blog articles
2. Publish the articles on your website
3. Post an article, one a week, out to social media, profiles, pages, and groups
4. Go after new friends, followers, connections, at least once a week
5. Engage and follow-up on comment, shares, likes
6. Move contacts offline to your email list
Daunting I know… But very doable! So, 1/2hr a day, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, gives you 10 hours total.
Farm Out What You Can
Items 3,4, and 6 can be farmed out. They are kind of repetitive “grunt” work. So, hire a teenager, or someone who needs a little extra money to do these for you. Let’s look at them in detail:
3. Post an article, one a week, out to social media, profiles, pages, and groups.
I suggest you design the post; what is the title hook to get people to click to read, what image should go with the post, what hashtags, any other text, and of course, the link. Put this in a spreadsheet with a column for each of the places you want it posted to, and let someone else do the update posts. And use a scheduler for what you can.
4. Go after new friends, followers, connections, at least once a week.
You can provide instructions on this, what you want the connection request message to say, and who to target (doctors in Los Angeles, or people in a particular group you are a member in, as examples), and let someone else actually issue the requests. Probably no more than 10 at a time each day, a few times a week.
And then the second part of this task is to thank people for accepting your request, or following you, and asking them for their email address if you cannot find it on their profile. You can craft this standard message and let someone else send it out for you.
“Thanks for following me. I’d like to add your name to my monthly newsletter list where I send out recipes and coupons, but I need your email address. Please message me back with it. Thanks”
6. Move contacts offline to your email list.
Once you start receiving email addresses, you should move them to a spreadsheet and/or your email autorespinder list. This task also can be farmed out to your helper.
So here are the remainder of items:
1. Write 2-4 blog articles
2. Publish the articles on your website
5. Engage and follow-up on comment, shares, likes
1. Write 2-4 blog articles
This is something you can easily do… Keep a list of topics - I think of them in all kinds of place, in the shower, while riding my bike, in my garden, and I jot them down, keeping a list. The second tip for this is to write them a month in advance, so write the articles in June you will publish to your website and post on social media in July. For hints on what to write about, read this article: How To Blog To Drive Business
I would allocate 1 hour per article for free form writing, and another hour for each to edit, add link(s) to other articles, and find the right image. So if you do 2 articles - that’s 4 hours. If you do 4 articles, that’s 8.
2. Publish the articles on your website. Once you have one on your website as an example, someone else can do this.
5. Engage and follow-up on comment, shares, likes
This can be ½ hr a week, divided up into 2 15-minute sessions, or 3 10-minute sessions, etc depending upon the platform. And actually, someone else can thank people for likes and shares - you just craft the message one-time and they can do it for you So all you need to do is respond to comments and engage in conversations.
So in summary - here is the list and how I would advocate the time at ½ hr per day:
Here is my list:
1. Write 2-4 blog articles - you do this… 4-8 hours per month
2. Publish the articles on your website - farm out
3. Post an article, one a week, out to social media, profiles, pages, and groups (farm out)
4. Go after new friends, followers, connections, at least once a week (farm out)
5. Engage and follow-up on comment, shares, likes (farm out except for responding to comments) ½ hour per week
6. Move contacts offline to your email list (farm out)
And at the end of the month, look at all you will have accomplished.
This is the 8th article in this Questions Series of articles where I answer the most commonly asked questions I get from customers and workshop attendees.
The previous articles in this series, in case you’d like to take a look at them are:
1. I Don’t Need a Website; Can’t I Just Use Facebook?
2. Can I Copy Stuff Off The Web and Use It On My Blog?
3. Should My Business Posts Go On My Personal Profile Too?
4. OK - I Posted a Blog Article; How Come My Business Hasn’t Grown?
5. I Don’t Like Social Media - Why Do I Have To Use It For My Business?
6. Can I just use my logo online rather than a headshot?
7. Why Do I Need To Spend Time Online Chatting And Building Relationships?
Please let me know your thoughts and if you have questions you’d like to see addressed in this series of articles, please feel free to email me at info@ampurbiz.com
Tags: social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, engagement, blog, post