Last week I was at a networking event where we did some brainstorming around ideas each of us were stuck with. Almost all of them, were in some way related to social media. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert here, but I have made some small changes over the year which have really helped me. Both in terms of getting more engagement (through providing more relevant content) and the time I’m putting in. As all small business owners know, there’s never enough time in the day!
I’ve written posts about social media before but, as it’s both the Easter holidays and Marathon-week I’m going to be re-hashing / linking through to some old content. I promise it’ll still be useful!
So, my top tips for managing social media as a one-person business.
- Pick your channels. I’ve said it before, you can’t be everywhere at once. I suggest working out which channels your customers are on and focusing on doing those well, rather than spreading yourself too thin. Another part of this is to play to your strengths and interests. I love taking photos, so Instagram works well for me. I also like the spontaneous element of stories, if you find yourself wanting to share something you haven’t already scheduled. It’s (probably) no coincidence that this is the channel I get the most engagement on.
- Post regularly. You have to keep showing up, or people will forget you. I have another business, as well as Tiny Chipmunk, and I am really bad at remembering to post anything for that one. As a result, nobody ever comes to my page and when I do have something to say, Facebook doesn’t seem to put it in front of anyone unless I pay for it.
- Make it easy for yourself. Set up your Facebook posts to auto-tweet (or vice-versa) or your Instagram photos to post on Twitter. These little things can save you time day-to-day.
- Schedule your posts. I wrote about this in detail here, so won’t go into it again. This is a huge time-saver, so well worth investing the time upfront to get it set up.
- Find great content. Again, you can read about how I use Feedly to do this. It took around an hour to set up, but now it’s running I have a constant supply of relevant things to post. While I’m on the subject, do you remember that it’s perfectly acceptable to post other people’s content as long as it’s relevant to your audience and you don’t try and pass it off as your own.
- Check what you’re posting is relevant / resonating by looking at the statistics. For Facebook you can do this by going to your page and looking at the ‘posts’ tab. On Instagram this is a bit easier, as the likes are displayed right there. Once you get an idea of what your audience responds well to, you can start doing a bit more of it.
So there you have it! 5 top tips, plus a bonus!
A little disclaimer here. I’m not an expert, nor do I claim to be. (There are plenty out there, if that’s what you’re looking for.) I have however made huge progress (for me) in the past year. As always, this blog is intended for people at a similar stage to me, or perhaps just starting out. If that’s not you, you may well know most of what I post already. (In which case, I’d love some pointers please!)
Normal service will resume next week – assuming I survive my marathon of course!