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Q: Dear B2B: I am time restricted. How can I boost my social media presence quickly?
A: This is a great question and not an uncommon challenge for companies both large and small. It’s funny – social media posts are supposed to be short and sweet, right? And when you think about having a presence, whether it’s on Facebook, LinkedIn, or your platform of choice, you’d think it would be relatively painless to manage. Plan out some posts, write them, post them and onto the next project. But when the rubber meets the road, the rosy picture you’ve idealised just doesn’t match the reality. You find you’re spending more time than you thought. Or, conversely, you’d like to spend more time to really nurture your social presence, but you just don’t have the bandwidth.
So, what are some quick and effective ways that you can make an impact while making the most of your limited time? Particularly with the goal of growing your followers?
Prioritise
Decide what platforms are the most important for you to have a presence. If you know that your audience doesn’t use Twitter, then hit the pause button. Your time will be better spent on the channels where you know your target audience frequents. It’ll be one less platform for you to manage.
Organise
Create a monthly social media editorial calendar and plan posts in advance. Look into scheduling tools like Hootsuite or Buffer. Both offer free and paid subscription plans. You can easily upload your social media posts right into the platform and have a month’s worth of posts ready to go. There are other tools that let you plan out your monthly editorial calendar AND schedule (Sprout Social, Oktopost and Sprinklr are a few). Some of these tools will integrate with scheduling platforms or do it all, making it easy for you to manage your post creation and posting in one place. Using a tool like any of these mentioned can save you lots of time.
Get creative
Of course, your posts should be relevant and engaging. Think about your audience. What challenges can you help them solve? What content do you have to talk about that can help them? Find it, create it, send them back to your website or YouTube channel so they can learn more. Videos, whitepapers, blog posts, interactive content – these are some of the most effective. However, you should always review your analytics to really understand which types are resonating. These are just some of the standard rules to live by.
But when I say get creative, I’m talking about how you can amp up your posts with the goals of gaining more followers and broadening reach.
- Tag industry influencers, publications or other relevant accounts. Doing so helps broaden the reach of your post and starts to foster a relationship with other social handles. Also, don’t be afraid to hit the share button. It’s a two-way street, and those handles will appreciate the recognition. That will also encourage those accounts to share your posts, too.
- Ask your employees to share company posts. Liking a post is great, but when an employee shares a post, it gets eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels and is re-shared 25 times more frequently, according to Fast Company.
- Get an executive leader on board. When a CEO or executive leader has an active presence on social media, it not only sets an example for employees, it builds credibility for your brand.
- Reply to comments. If someone mentions your brand or comments directly on your post (whether it’s positive or negative), respond in a timely manner. Followers will see that you’re responsive, transparent, and that your brand cares about what they have to say.
- Consider paid social tactics. There are many effective, budget-friendly ways to enhance the reach of your posts. For example, LinkedIn Sponsored posts or boosting posts on Facebook – it all depends on your budget, the platforms you’re on and your goals.
The great thing about social media is that there’s always room to experiment. If something doesn’t work, it’s very easy to try something new. So, experiment with some of these ideas and see what works for you. For the busy marketer, there are always tips and tricks you can use to make the best use of your time.
