Social media marketing can be a bit much for small business owners trying to run a business. You don’t know which way to turn, there are multiple social media choices, it’s like you need to clone yourself in order to cover them all. Well, it isn’t realistic to clone yourself, and it isn’t realistic to be on every social media site. You must incorporate a way to devote 2-3 hours per week on social media marketing efforts. Schedule a specific time, and stick to that allocated amount of time. There are some ways to make the most of your time on social media:
- Be particular- be regularly on a site or don’t be there at all. When someone glances at your social media site and sees that the last posting you made was 6 months prior, they assume you and your business are inactive.
- Advertising- be certain that, your social media site reflects your website. Don’t branch off and use different slogans or images, stick to the same on all sites, otherwise it gets confusing to the customer. They need to recognize your logo instantly. Whatever you do, respond to questions or comments. Not responding is like ignoring a customer that walks in your door, so provide some type of response.
- Pinterest features a trending topic of the day, each day of the week. They tend to follow a guideline of a particular topic each day such as Mondays for fitness, Tuesdays for technology, etc. Decide which topic suits your business best and be sure to engage that day.
- Twitter can offer you an advantage, you can use Follerwonk to analyze your followers for free. Doing so will help you see when your followers tend to be on twitter, and you can set your schedule accordingly.
- Facebook’s best posting times are Thursday and Friday between 1-3 pm.
- Instagram has a much smaller audience, but is growing daily and actually has more interaction rate than Facebook. The best days to post on Instagram are Monday and Wednesday, all the weekdays are typically good in general.
Having the right tools can make all the difference between spending many hours on social media and spending just a few minutes on it. Some business owners worry that using automation for social media marketing lessons the personalization experience, however, there is a method for combining your own personalization with marketing tools and making the best of both worlds. Combining the right tools with real-time presence can save you time and money on social media marketing. Stay interactive on the social media sites that you opt to go with. If you find that you’re unable to devote time refrain from using that particular social media account, it’s better than ignoring customers that have a comment or question. Social media can be a great marketing tool, just make sure that you know what you’re doing and that you relate to your customers.
