Time-Saving Social Media Hacks
On a recent mastermind call, the facilitator asked, “What’s the difference between ‘traveling’ and a ‘vacation’?” It got me thinking about the social media conference from which I just returned and BlogPaws 2017, which is fast approaching. My recent trip to Social Media Marketing World was a vacation–a week of sun and fun in San Diego with my family combined with conference attendance. BlogPaws will be traveling, as I will be speaking, attending sessions, networking and generally soaking up the knowledge and atmosphere that a BlogPaws conference brings.
My client work doesn’t fade away when I travel or take a vacation, so I have come up with these time-saving social media hacks to help me keep up with client work without guilt. These hacks help you both save time in performing your social media tasks AND save time in growing your following… Win-Win!
Time-Saving Social Media Hacks
Curate content. Not everything you post on social media has to be written by you. In fact, your audience might just appreciate you more if you shared the expertise of others in whom you trust. Sharing content also helps build your circle of influence with the person whose content you’re sharing. You can use a content curation tool like Feedly or Buffer to help find content to share.
Tap into influencers. If you have a guru you follow, tag him or her when you share content. Tagging influencers is also a crucial way in which to grown your own social following. Look for influencers who are within your niche, but who are not direct competition. Target influencers, add them to Twitter lists and grow your following.
Schedule your blog posts and your social media posts. I don’t recommend scheduling all of your social media posts using a scheduler–human interaction is key to social media. Find content, then use a tool like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to schedule posts to go live when you’re traveling or on vacation. Don’t forget Facebook has its own calendaring option; use that when you’re getting ready to take a vacation!
if you’re at a loss for content about which to write. Many people turn to social media to get the latest in news and information. If you can find a way to stay within your niche and tie it in with trending news – go for it – it will help you join in the bigger conversations that are swirling around on social media.
Automate tasks. Look at the web platform on which your blog is housed and see if there are widgets or other tools you can integrate that will blast your blog post out to your social platforms once the post goes live. If you don’t want to automate the sharing, it may save time if you add information onto your editorial calendar about what you will share on your social media platforms and when once your post goes live.
Be strategic with social follows. Would you rather have 100,000 unengaged followers or 1,000 followers who are engaged? I’ll bet you’d rather have lower numbers, but higher engagement, right? Yes, it’s great to say, “I have a billion followers” but if they’re not interacting, does that number matter?
What are your best time-saving social media hacks? What do you do to prepare for times you’re going to be on vacation or at a conference?
Robbi Hess is an award-winning author, full-time writer, newspaper columnist, writing coach and time-management guru. She works with bloggers and solopreneurs and blogs at All Words Matter. I will be speaking at BlogPaws 2017 as part of the Cat Writers’ Association. My topic is: “Overworked & Overwhelmed? The Four-Step Process for Reinventing Your Writing” Synopsis: Whether you’re writing full time, blogging, in the midst of a multi-book project or just starting out, this session will help you lose the feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed. You’ll learn a four-step process to beat procrastination, use time blocking to help you get more done, claim your writing time and bump up your creativity and some in-the-trenches writing tips, hacks and advice. There will be giveaways, handouts and time for questions! Hope to see you there!
