by Audie Cunningham | Aug 7, 2024 | Biz Tips
Many small business owners understand the impact social media marketing can have on their business. The problem I often hear from owners is that they can’t find the time to manage their social media accounts, and they often don’t know how to interact with their audience. Maintaining a presence on social media takes up valuable time, and building a strong social media presence requires strategy and consistency. To help you manage your social media accounts alongside your other responsibilities, I suggest creating a social media workflow.
A social media workflow is a way to integrate your tasks into your monthly calendar. Doing this can help you save time, strengthen your following, create brand awareness and instill trust. A social media workflow can even result in more sales leads.
Your workflow should help turn a little bit of work into a lot of content. The most important part of this strategy is to create a workflow that fits your schedule and allows you to be consistent. Many small business owners don’t put social media marketing time in their monthly schedule and then they find themselves staring at their phone at the end of a long day, wondering what to post that will be engaging. If staring at your phone at 4:45 on a Thursday afternoon isn’t inspiring for you, you’re not alone! This is rarely an effective strategy. Instead of wrestling with this scenario day after day, perhaps it’s time to get more strategic and create the workflow that helps you take control of your time and social media.
I recommend pairing your social media duties with other monthly tasks you might already be doing such as reconciling your books, sending a newsletter, or doing payroll. Perhaps start with adding in 1 hour per month to work on your social media. The amount of time you need will vary based on your goals and how quickly you can navigate through your online platforms. Pick a topic that is related to your business and is something you think your audience will be interested in. Write a paragraph style blog post on the topic. Once you are done writing, use those couple of paragraphs to create some social media posts to use throughout the month.
Let’s use this biz tip as an example. I picked a topic that comes up a lot in my work and that I feel like my audience would like to learn more about. Once I am done writing it, it will be published on the Wyoming SBDC Network website. Then, I could create some social media posts using small chunks from the writing. Here are some example social media posts:
Tired of staring at your phone at 4:45 PM trying to figure out what to post? It’s time to get strategic! Call the SBDC for assistance with your social media marketing.
Do you feel like you’re wasting time on your business’ social media pages? Try scheduling 1 hour per month to work on a strategy. Your local SBDC advisor can assist you with your specific goals.
In these examples I’m not coming up with new ideas, I’m just pulling some interesting snippets from the blog post and pairing it with a call to action at the end. Create as many as you can, and then start scheduling those posts either in Meta Business Suite or some other social media scheduling software. If you can schedule at least a post or two for each week in the month, you will feel a lot less pressure to create and post content during the rest of your busy month.
The Wyoming SBDC Network has advisors who can help you create your own workflow, plan content, and set up social media scheduling – either by using your preferred scheduling software or Meta Business Suite. If you want to create your own strategy that helps you save time while being more effective, an advisor can help. Contact your local advisor today to get started with your social media strategy.
About the Author: Audie enjoys seeing community members bring their business ideas to life and is eager to help them grow and thrive. As an entrepreneur, Audie has worked in art licensing and graphic design and has 10 years of experience in customer service and marketing through her work in public libraries. Her education and experience have given her knowledge in print and digital marketing, creating marketing plans, social media marketing, and business planning. When not supporting local businesses through the Wyoming SBDC Network, Audie enjoys getting outside to ride her bike, ski, and paint.
