The first thing a business or manager will often consider is whether investing in social media activities is actually giving the results that make the time and effort spent worthwhile. If this is likely to be an issue, you need to make sure you maximise your time spent on social media activities.
When you are trying to juggle your social media activities with a whole bunch of other daily tasks, be sure to do it as effectively as humanly possible. Always try and synch your multiple accounts (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube et al) so one proactive update can be pushed out over all of those portals with a solitary click of a mouse.
In previous blogs I have mentioned my dashboard of choice is Hootsuite. Not only does it offer the functionality of one-click updates, but it also allows you to monitor responses to all your different social media accounts, and to respond to any enquiries on any social media account from the one Hootsuite dashboard. The Hootsuite dashboard also gives you a clear notification if there has been any activity in any of your social media portals. This saves you from keeping multiple browsers open all day and repeatedly having to go back and forth checking if there is any activity for you to need to react to.
One of the key features for me with Hootsuite is the ability to time-delay messages. Hopefully you have a clear social media diary which links clearly to company activities and the marketing schedule for your company. If so, you can plan tweets and Facebook updates far in advance, and schedule them with Hootsuite to go live when you require. This is a great time-saving solution when you are sending out announcements and proactive messaging across social media.
If you are really struggling for time due to the size of your workload, have some template messages prepared and ready to enter into Hootsuite at the beginning of the week allowing yourself to free up your time for other duties. Just be sure to regularly check back and interact with any replies or feedback which you may receive, as social media should always involve a two-way communication with your customer.
