3 time-busting social media efficiency tips

Time is public enemy number one of small business owners. Undoubtedly, it is one of the challenges cited most frequently by our client base. Who doesn’t need more time to make people aware of their services and products; more time to communicate with clients and prospects; more time to analyse the ROI of existing efforts? Yet your competitors are using social media marketing to grow their business and you risk losing new customers if you don’t keep up.

Here are three efficiency measures that will make every minute devoted to social activity work harder for you:

1. Use Buffer to share links

Time waster: One of the biggest time drains in social marketing activity is content sharing. When you stumble across something so relevant and cool you need to share it across all your networks, productivity and focus take an immediate hit.

Solution: Set aside a dedicated chunk of time first thing every day to select the worthiest, most interesting pieces of content in line with your social media strategy. Then use Buffer to automatically share them via your chosen social networks at pre-determined, optimised times throughout the day.

2. Create a ‘stalker’ list

Time waster: There’s little point in interacting with those who don’t move in the right circles or have any influence within your sector.

Solution: Be more selective about who your target with social activity. Begin by creating a list of the 20 people you most want to interact with in social media. Create lists for these people on Twitter and Facebook, and a circle for them on Google+. You should bookmark their blogs, where applicable, subscribe to their feeds and find them on LinkedIn.

Find relevant and intelligent ways to interact with these people on a daily basis (such as commenting on their blogs) and you should significantly improve the quality of your social contacts. Repeat this list-making process every few months.

3. Don’t get obsessed with case studies

Time waster: While trying to weigh up whether social media will have measurable effects on your business, it’s tempting to read as many case studies as possible for research purposes.

Solution: One of the biggest problems with case studies is that they are often strategically irrelevant. Companies in different sectors face a completely different set of KPIs, business goals, customer personas, budget constraints, social media goals and so on. Worry less about what other companies are doing and worry more about working out a coherent social media strategy for your company.

Over to you

As if to prove my point, I’ve run out of time to mention the plethora of other time-saving techniques out there, from logging into LinkedIn Today (for a trusted, valuable summary of daily content) to using Google+ to engage with professional networks more efficiently and succinctly.

What time-saving tactics do you use to get the most out of social media activity?