Maybe you’re already hustling the social media scene and feel like it’s eating away at your already packed schedule. On the other hand, you may be avoiding it and wondering why small businesses need social media in the first place.
Wherever you find yourself on the vast spectrum of social media engagement and management, we want to help simplify the process for you.
Over the years our digital marketing team has helped many small businesses and nonprofits set up and systemize social media strategies that boost brand awareness and create opportunities to make connections with new audiences. And now we are sharing our best ideas with you.
Keep reading to discover our best tips, tricks, and hacks for managing your small business social media accounts when your time is limited.
If you’ve ever asked yourself, “can businesses survive without social media?” you probably haven’t experienced the benefit of social media done right. This is understandable because…
Making social media work for small business marketing isn’t the same as using social media on a personal level.
If you approach small business social media management the same way you approach personal social media engagement, you’re likely going to be disappointed by the results.
Oftentimes, small businesses that aren’t experiencing success with social media are “doing social media” without a strategy. We all know the dangers of spaghetti marketing, and the same rings true with social media marketing. You can’t just haphazardly throw content to the wall and see if it sticks.
Starting with a strategy assumes that you’ve made it a priority. Prioritizing social media is critical because inconsistency will kill all of your efforts. In order to build momentum, social media engagement has to be a daily part of your marketing routine.
So open up your calendar and set a specific time where you, or someone on your team, will engage with your audience on social media. Without this commitment, your efforts will fall short.
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Investing the time on the front end to create the schedule will save you an abundance of time in the long run. Don’t overcomplicate this. Simply create a spreadsheet with columns for topic, content, due date, posting date, and a link to the content.
Using a Google Drive folder to store your social media content makes it easy to share with others who are helping manage your social media accounts. You can easily share a social media schedule like this with a virtual assistant (VA), intern, or someone else on your team to execute the plan for you.
In terms of content, we just wrote a post on how to come up with social media content ideas. If you’re already blogging, you’re in luck because one 800 word blog post can easily be repurposed into short-form social media content.
Here are some other easy social media ideas for businesses:
If you don’t have a social media assistant who can schedule content for you, leverage a content scheduling tool to automate the process yourself.
In a previous post we shared the best social media management tools for small businesses, but to reiterate, the most important tool you need to save time and sanity is a social media management platform like Hootsuite or Buffer.
This one simple shift can save you countless hours of time in the social media weeds.
Here are a few reasons why scheduling tools may be the best social media hack for small businesses:
Beyond scheduling, many social media automation tools also offer monitoring services that allow you to easily track when someone comments or replies to what you’ve posted. Hootsuite offers some valuable insight on how to leverage this data for a social listening campaign.
If you’re worried about keeping up with your DMs, consider using a social media chatbot to keep your response times high.
After you schedule content for your feeds, use the time you’ve saved to create stories are reels. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have made short-form video production easy and accessible for today’s marketers — and audiences love engaging in these spaces on social media.
As we’ve highlighted before, social media users place a high value on content that entertains. And while entertaining content may not result in automatic conversions, it does do wonders for brand awareness and audience engagement.
We are including educational content with entertaining content because most social media users would categorize the educational content they’re searching for as entertaining as well. For example, people who are watching stories and reels about recipes or trip planning are being entertained while they learn.
Combining the two packs a powerful punch that hooks viewers and keeps them wanting more. And when they’re ready to make a buying decision, you’re content will be at the top of their feeds.
5. Get Help if You Need It
Maybe you have one social media coordinator managing your social accounts. If you’re lucky, you have a small team of people posting and monitoring social engagement on your behalf.
Or, if you’re like many small business owners, you are managing your social media accounts yourself. And we’re pretty sure you didn’t start your business to be a social media strategist.
If this is the case, you don’t need us to tell you that this scenario is less than ideal. Running a business is hard enough, adding in the daily—dare we say hourly—demands of social media engagement to an already full plate is a recipe for burnout and disappointment.
If you’re overwhelmed or frustrated with the demands social media management is placing on your business, it may be time to hire a social media manager. Alternatively, you may benefit from hiring a social media marketing agency for your small business.
By now it’s clear why social media is important for your business but maybe you still have questions. Cross & Crown is a full-service branding and digital marketing agency offering social media marketing services for small business and nonprofit clients. Our team can set up a social media strategy, calendar, and posting schedule for you or equip you to do it yourself.
We hope these social media hacks for business have helped you get more out of your digital marketing strategy. For more information, check out our ultimate guide to social media management and let us know if you need our help growing business with social media marketing!