Ideas for your digital marketing to save your small business time and headaches.
Raise your hand if you could use a few more hours added to your day? Keep your hands up if your to-do list is never completely done? We see you. Yeah, even you in the back trying to do five things at once while you’re reading this blog. We see you.
It takes a lot of grit to be a successful business owner. Accountants by day, digital marketing experts by night. The list of hats you wear never seem to run out, so anytime you can save a few minutes you’re all for it. So are we. At webSMART, we’re all about working SMARTer.
We’ve put together a list of five time-saving marketing hacks to help you do more within your 24 hours, and maybe earn you a few minutes of well-deserved lollygagging while you’re at it. You ready for it? Let’s go!
1. Set a schedule.
Multitasking is just a part of life for business owners. But sometimes, focusing on one task can be more efficient than trying to juggle five all at the same time. This is especially true when you’re about to tackle a task notorious for being a total time suck, social media.
So how much time do you spend on social media right now? Over 60% of marketers spend six or more hours a week on social media marketing activities. As a business owner, you may not have have six hours to spend just on social media. Save time by breaking social media into smaller tasks that you can tackle in batches, like creating posts, writing copy, and scheduling.
Writing and creating a month’s worth of social media posts.
Yes, a whole month! It may sound daunting, but writing and creating a month’s worth of social media posts in one sitting does save you time.
Think about the times you’ve created a single social media post. You take a few minutes to get settled, review past content to see what worked, and then think up new ideas. Then you gather what you need to complete one engaging post. It’s a lot of prep work for one or two posts when you could tackle a whole month with one set up.
Writing a month’s worth of social media posts does take some time, so get started by:
Organizing your workspace. A little organization can go a long way when it comes to creating social media posts. Get started by gathering your templates, customer personas, images, and ideas in one place.
Reviewing what worked and what didn’t work by going over your analytics for the different platforms. Most social media platforms provide insights for business account holders, so you can review those. Or check out webSMART’s launchSITE, which gathers analytics from different platforms, along with other beautiful data related to your online presence, in one place and presents it in easy-to-read reports.
Bringing out your list of ideas and start creating.
Set a time limit to complete this task and stick to it. You’ll see the amount of time you spend on social media come down as you get more familiar with the tools available to you and how to reach your target audience.
PRO-TIP
Jot down your social media ideas on a notepad or your phone [anywhere easily accessible] throughout the month. This list can help you when you start writing and creating your social media posts for the next month.
Scheduling posts on different platforms.
Do you ever notice how some businesses can schedule their posts at the same time every day, even on holidays? They’re probably not sitting there waiting to post each day at the same time. Chances are they’re using a scheduling tool to schedule in advance. You can do this too, especially if you’re already batch-creating posts for the month.
There are many social media schedulers, some are built into the platform like Facebook, while others are third-party tools that allow you to schedule your posts on various platforms like Later.
2. Create and follow a marketing calendar.
Have you ever launched a new product or service and wished you announced it on social media? Or wish you created a page to introduce your new service?
While adding more hours isn’t possible, creating a marketing calendar can help merge your production schedule with your marketing efforts. Do you release a new product every October? Put it in your marketing calendar. Then start building out what social media posts, blogs, or any other marketing strategy to help get the word out leading up to the launch.
There are tons of marketing calendars templates online to help you get started, including our very own launchSITE template. Once you’ve chosen one, start by plugging in the important dates for your business, holidays, and even random national days that might be relevant to your business, like National Ice Cream Day.
While it does take a bit of time to create and maintain a marketing calendar, the time saved is worth it. Plus, having your marketing efforts planned out for the next quarter or even the whole year will come in handy during the months you don’t have time to sit down and think about it. Just follow your plan.
3. Use templates for repeated tasks.
Are you creating the same posts month after month and just changing out the image? Do you have a format that all your blog posts need to follow? Or maybe you always have a hard time remembering what size image to use for Facebook and Instagram. Create a template for all of these. You can even create a product launch calendar template, so you’re not constantly reinventing the wheel.
Templates can save you valuable time by eliminating repetitive steps. You can download templates online from sites like Later or Social Media Today, or you can access a library of templates all in one place with a launchSITE membership.
PRO-TIP
Check out Canva, a graphic design website that helps non-designers create graphics to use on their website, social media, or even in business proposals. You can also save and share templates.
4. Invest in useful applications to automate.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could automate certain tasks like tweeting new blog posts right when they are published? Or update your reading to-do list whenever industry news comes out that could impact your business? Or maybe even automatically send out emails to your customers whenever you offer a special deal?
Well, you can. And you don’t have to be in the NASA Mission Control Central to do it. There are tons of automation tools to help you tackle marketing tasks, as well as other business tasks. Web-based tools like Zapier, IFTTT, and Trello are just a handful of the tools you can use to integrate different parts of your business. It’ll take time to set up at first. But once set up, you’ll have more time to focus on the keys to unlocking online marketing success.
5. Get help.
Yes, we said it. Sometimes we could all use a little help. For every 20 minutes of tasks you delegate, you can potentially save 100 minutes per week. That’s more time to focus on brainstorming digital marketing ideas to help your small business and beating your competition instead.
Consider delegating some of the routine tasks to members of your team. You may have to spend some time explaining your marketing strategy and your vision, but you’ll save time once they are up to speed. And if you’re like many solopreneurs out there who don’t have a team, consider outsourcing tasks like writing blogs or creating social media posts. Get access to more ways to work SMARTer and manage your online presence by checking out launchSITE.
DON’T FLOAT. SOAR INTO SPACE!
Hustling is part of the business owner’s life. Implementing some of the time-saving marketing hacks can help you find time to focus on other parts of your business, including coming up with more ways to outpace your competition.
Plus, saving time on marketing can earn you some much-earned relaxation on the beach or at the local coffee shop. And who couldn’t use a little bit of that? So if you’re serious about saving time and exploring more ways to work SMARTer, check out launchSITE and see how it could be the answer for your business.
