Social media has a tendency to pull us in and speed up the clock. (Ever wondered how you got stuck in that rabbit hole for hours?) And when you use social media for business, add exasperation on top of that.

It can feel pointless marketing your business on social media with all the changes to the algorithm and low engagement on your posts. But social media is still effective, and this post will dive into five ways to save time on social media while getting results.

Choose your platforms strategically.

You don’t have to be on every social media platform. (I, for one, want NOTHING to do with TikTok.) Determine your target market and which social media platforms they’re most likely to be on. Millennials adore Instagram while retirees are Facebook fiends, for instance.

And if your business serves mainly locally-based customers, you can skip YouTube, Twitter, and even Pinterest. Put your efforts where your audience is.

Need some help? Module 6 of Marketing 101 dives deeper into which social media platforms your business should be on, and will help you nail down a concrete strategy. Read this post to get a head start.

Opt for quality over quantity.

Guess how many times I post on Facebook per week? Just three, tops!

There are so many accounts posting daily on social media and I don’t want to put in the effort if my posts will barely be seen. So I focus on boosting my engagement so when my 2-3 posts per week go up, they’re more likely to make an impact.

And by “post” I mean formal post on my Facebook wall/Instagram profile. I try to post something simple on Instagram Stories every day, share a post on LinkedIn, and tweet or retweet something on Twitter, which are engagement boosters (see below).

Recycle content.

Your business is likely getting new followers often, and they would totally benefit from something you’ve already shared.

The best way to recycle content is not by copy/pasting, but by excerpting and adapting.

Ex. When I write a blog post, I…
1. Publish it on my website.
2. Pin it to Pinterest.
3. Share the direct link on my marketing channels.
When I recycle content, I also…
4. Use a quote from the blog on a graphic that I post on social media.
5. Share the entire post in an e-newsletter.
And more!

The key is to make something new so it’s fresh for your established audience. Repetition isn’t a problem, as long as it’s interesting.

They say it takes an average of seven times seeing something before someone takes an action on it, so repetition isn’t always a bad thing.

Schedule posts ahead of time.

Batching content and scheduling it is the most effective way to save time. When you’re focused on one specific task, such as creating social media posts, you can get way more done than if you spread that task out. You’re also less likely to go weeks without posting.

Scheduling also allows you to space out your posts and have them published at the most advantageous time for your audience. Most people tend to see my posts when they go live at 5 a.m., but there’s no way I’m awake at the time they’re published!

The tutorial below walks through how to schedule a post on both Facebook and Instagram using the new Facebook Business Suite.

Desktop

Mobile

Engage actively to boost your engagement.

Facebook wants people to stay on Facebook. Same as all other social media platforms. So the more actively engaged you are, the more engagement your posts will receive. Below are some examples of active engagement.

1. Comment on other posts.

2. Reply to comments on your posts

3. Reply to Instagram/Facebook Stories.

4. Share posts to your Instagram/Facebook Stories.

I spend about 15 minutes a day actively engaging on my social media accounts. That’s it!

Both Facebook Facelift and Instagram Insight dive deeper into engaging actively so you can boost your own posts’ engagement.

With a bit of strategy and the commitment to plan ahead, you can save time on social media while still making it an effective marketing channel.

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