Every business needs to connect and build trust with their audience. One of the best ways to do this is through social media.

The great thing about social media is… it’s quick and easy to set up a profile and get started. And of course, it’s free. Most of us can fumble our way through and set up a profile on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest. And after fiddling around for a few minutes, we can usually figure out how to do our first post. Some people even do a pretty good job with this!

But the real problem with social media starts to become evident when you’re running more than one type of social media. Reality bites when you’ve got 5 different profiles begging you to post each day, but nowhere near enough time to do it. How in the world are you meant to keep up?

Sound familiar?

If you’re struggling to keep up with the demands of your business on social media, this blog is for you!

IN THE BEGINNING, YOU MIGHT HAVE TIME…

When you start a business, you usually experiment a bit with your marketing until you figure out what works. With social media, this often means creating and posting your content in real time.

Real-time social media posts have some benefits. You can refine and adjust your strategy as you get feedback from your audience. And you can change your content as you figure out what works for your brand. Plus – when you first start your business, you have plenty of time and motivation to get things going.

BUT IF YOU’RE NOT SHORT ON TIME NOW, YOU WILL BE SOON

If you push through the early launch phase, your business will start to take off. It’s amazing what you can achieve with a little persistence. The exciting (but stressful) side effect is… you’ll soon find yourself short on time.

This is where I see a lot of businesses fall off the bandwagon. Here’s what happens:

• You’re busy helping your new customers and clients and doing the work
• You get behind on your social media
• You’re caught in the trap of playing catch up all the time
• You either neglect your marketing, or sacrifice your free time to ensure more leads come in

But it doesn’t have to be that way!

As your business grows, you have to learn how to do things smarter. You need to squeeze more results out of the same time. You have to create systems and processes or you quickly run out of time before you even get into serving your clients and customers (otherwise you won’t be able to make money!).

In this blog, I’ll talk more about the smarter, systemised way to do your social media marketing. So, if you’re feeling like you’re constantly behind on your content… keep reading!

SOCIAL MEDIA CAN BE REALLY DISTRACTING…

Perhaps the biggest problem with jumping into social media every time you need to share a post is the distractions. Like…

// Hmm how many people did my last post reach?
// What will happen if I refresh that page?
// Oh look, a notification… let’s go see what that’s about
// Should I boost that post Facebook is suggesting?
// Maybe I should advertise my new service
// Wonder what my ex is up to
// Lol
// Facebook messenger is so dang annoying
// Oh, a special offer for me? Thank you!
// Facebook wants me to check my security settings – guess I’d better do that ASAP
// Oh, another notification… oh, okay then…

Suddenly, you’ve lost two hours of your day that you should have spent on something else. And 99% of that time wasn’t even spent creating content! It’s wasting time and energy you don’t have.

WHY YOU NEED TO START BEING STRATEGIC WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA

Too many business owners approach their social media without a strategy. They post when they feel like it, ad-hoc, in the moment. If they ever made a plan, they haven’t looked at it for months.

It’s draining trying to think about your social media marketing and content each week, let alone each day. Jumping into that creative zone takes time and energy you don’t have. Especially when…

• You’ve got a million other tasks in your business that are vying for your attention
• Some of those tasks can earn you money
• Those tasks are closer to your zone of genius
• Honestly, you’d rather do anything BUT your content

Creating your social media content can feel so draining. And a bit pointless (especially when some days it feels like no one’s watching). You start to dread it almost as much as tax time.

It’s stressful trying to be consistent and relevant all the time. Nobody is that switched on every single day. I’m guessing you didn’t start your business to stress all the time or have no free time. But you can enjoy freedom and flexibility and spend time with your loved ones… AND stay on top of your social media.

It all starts with your strategy.

START WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

I see a lot of people get all excited about shiny new tools, sign up, do a post or two, and then give up. The problem isn’t the tool, it’s that they skipped an important step – strategy. You need to get strategic about your social media and put a plan in place for your content. This gives you focus and purpose so that:

• You know why you’re doing it in the first place
• You feel motivated to follow through
• You don’t get side-tracked from your actual goal with shiny things

So, if you haven’t already got a solid strategy in place, why wait? Let’s put one together now. I’ll walk you through the simple steps that will lay the foundation for social media automation below.

What exactly do you want to achieve by automating your social media? They don’t need to be hard numbers based (like increase my followers from xx to xx).

In fact, I find that softer metrics give more focus, remove unnecessary pressure and allow you to find more joy in your social media activity.

FOR EXAMPLE…

• I want to increase my visibility and consistency while dedicating my time to my core business tasks (and only working 3 days a week!)
• I want to raise my profile as an expert in my field and highlight my passion and credibility points (as I don’t feel as confident selling myself ‘real-time’).
• I want to build the ‘know, like, trust’ factor on auto-pilot by delivering regular, high-quality content.
• I want to attract more of my ideal clients into my top level, free offer to have ‘warm leads’ entering my sales funnel 24/7.
• I want to promote a mix of all my offerings evenly (or a certain offering as priority) and the call to action will be to book a call / visit my site / buy online.

If you’re just starting out, focus on just one or two key networks where you know your ideal soul clients hang out. Don’t try and conquer them all! It’s also important to recognise and acknowledge the purpose and audience expectations of each network.

FOR EXAMPLE…

• Facebook: I’ll create a mix of automated content (templated where possible) and content types (images, links, text, quote templates) that is highly relevant and useful to my audience all year round. I’ll respond to comments/messages real-time and I will post unscheduled Facebook lives as and when I feel called to.
• Twitter: I’ll batch create text-based ‘tip’ style content and schedule links to my own and other relevant industry articles with appropriate hashtags. I’ll tag influencers/authors where relevant.
• Instagram: I’ll pre-plan an aesthetically pleasing ‘on-brand’ layout with a mix of my own selfie/behind the scenes/product images and re-posts of other relevant images (always tagging them). I’ll do instagram ‘stories’ and ‘reels’ and interact with my audience and comment on relevant posts in real-time.
• LinkedIn: I’ll create a mix of automated content (mainly text and links) that is highly relevant to my audience all year round that will automate to my personal LinkedIn profile to appear in the News Feed of my network.

Now you’ve figured out a strategy that should keep you on track to achieve your goal(s), it’s onto the actual content you’ll schedule. To succeed with marketing automation, it’s ALL about categorisation.

It’s significantly easier to batch your content and organise your mind if you’re thinking in categories rather than ‘topics’. Detail 4-6 categories that will form your content plan.

FOR EXAMPLE…

• Promotion: A mix of all my offers (free and paid) with clear and strong call-to-action
• Me / Behind The Scenes: Increasing my visibility and highlighting my mission and passion for the work that I do
• Inspiration: High-quality inspiring and relevant content that raises my association with complementary industries and topics aligned with my biz
• Tips: Tips in my zone of genius that raise my profile as an expert and increase my credibility points
• Branded Quotes: Motivating, inspiring, sharable quotes with my branding to widen my potential audience reach
• Blogs: Share all my current and past blogs to increase the ‘know, like, trust’ factor and encourage potential clients to experience my knowledge and style
• Testimonials: Increase trust and demand by demonstrating social proof through past client testimonials

In terms of working out the ideal posting times for your categories/content, this will differ on each social network and be dependant on your unique audience and their expectations of your biz.

As with anything, you can test and learn once you are live and getting real-time feedback and results and adjust accordingly.

FOR EXAMPLE…

• Facebook: Start with scheduling 4-6 pieces of automated content per week (one per category). If your Facebook Business Page has enough likes/followers, a great place to start is by analysing real-time usage habits showing when your audience are online by visiting Insights>Posts>When Your Fans Are Online
• Twitter: Start with scheduling 6-8 pieces of automated content per week (from text-based categories). Twitter is quite a fast-moving medium so you could experiment with a wide-range of posting times and see what sticks
• Instagram: Start with scheduling 5-7 pieces of automated content per week. Think of your own/your ideal clients Instagram usage habits. You could mirror your Facebook analytics or start with the lunchtime/evening approach and go from there
• LinkedIn: Start with scheduling 4-6 pieces of automated content per week (one per category). Being more of a ‘business’ audience, usage tends to fall earlier in the week around commute and lunch-times but again this could differ for your unique audience.

THEN your content plan and strategy are done and you have achieved a solid foundation to start your automation. And it’s only a starting point. You can (and should) review your strategy every few months – or whenever you get solid feedback/results.

The important thing is that you now have a strategy and plan in place. You’ve got the focus to nail down your tactics. All your activities on social media should now come back to your plan and goals. This should decrease your chance of distraction.

BATCHING YOUR CONTENT

The exciting thing about a plan (hah – I’m such a nerd) is you can now see what content you need to create all in one place. You can start batching it up ahead of time. There are LOADS of different techniques you can use to batch your content. But the main idea is to create it all at once. Get into that creative headspace, get into a flow, and pump it out.

Start by batching a week’s content, a fortnight, then a month, then 3 months. Each time you sit down to batch your content, try to get a bit more ahead.

It’s a relief knowing that your social media marketing can take care of itself for a few months if you get too busy.

HOT TIP: if you’re creating a bunch of image posts, you can make it much quicker by working out of a template. Find a style on Canva that suits your brand, customise it a little, and then stick with it. Not only is it faster, but it gives your brand a more consistent, cohesive look and feel. And don’t worry – people won’t get bored of seeing the same image style over and over again!

SCHEDULE YOUR CONTENT

Once you’ve batched enough content (a week is enough if this is your first attempt!), it’s time to schedule your content as per your strategy and content plan.

Here’s where we can truly appreciate the amazing power of automation! There are lots of tools you can use to automate and schedule your content BUT there’s only a few key players on the market that also have ‘evergreen’ or ‘ recyclable’ content functions (this is the real secret sauce of automation!)

You know all those juicy bits of content that you have created or sourced as part of your content plan that are helpful and relevant to your audience all year round? Yep – that’s your evergreen strategy right there!

Here’s the top players at the mo:

• SmarterQueue (this one is the bees knees and the one I recommend to all my clients. It’s also only around $30-ish AUD per month for their ‘solo’plan which suits most of us.
• Meet Edgar
• Recurpost

MAKE IT A HABIT

Once you’ve scheduled your content, you can (almost) sit back and relax. But first, do one final step. You need to put a content refresh strategy in place.

Put a date on your calendar ahead of time. This will ensure you can jump on and batch/schedule more content before your current lot runs out. Because it would be a shame to let your content to run dry after days/weeks/months of beautiful consistency! You will of course have your ‘evergreen’ content there however a bit of freshness is always a good thing.

Now that your structure, systems and technology are in place, refreshing your content should be a breeze. Most of my clients are at the point of only dedicating 4-5 hours every two months to their social media. Imagine what you could do with all those extra hours!

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

I’ve shared a LOT of tips and info here. But what I really want for you is to get started so you can enjoy some results and more downtime. It’s what business is all about, after all! So, here’s what you need to do right now:

1. Create your social media strategy and content plan.
2. Put aside time to batch and do the creative work
3. Use the tools to schedule your content head of time
4. Make it a regular thing (put it on your calendar as a repeating task)

Want some extra help so you can feel confident that your strategy is on track? Check out how we can work together here >>

Ready for more time, less stress, and less hassle? Let’s do this…

– Claire