3.7: Time Management
Social media is a great tool for promoting your business without breaking the bank, but it can become a nuisance if you aren’t careful. Working as a social media marketer can be a tough job if you constantly feel the urge to scroll the timeline every now and then.
Furthermore, social marketing tends to be a time-consuming task. Without an effective plan, you will end up wasting time and won’t be able to achieve your goals.
A major reason why marketers fail to use social media to their advantage is that they try to be on every social network. This is neither possible nor a good idea. Regardless of whether you work on your own or have a social media team, it’s important to choose social websites that fit your goal. This way, you can save precious time by putting your entire focus on social accounts that can increase website traffic and generate results.
Another challenge for social marketers is to stay focused on work when logging into social media accounts for job-related tasks. You may soon find yourself checking posts and messages from other users. The best strategy to tackle this issue and manage time is to set time limits for every task. For instance, if you need to post a tweet, you should specify the time needed for the task. With the deadline approaching, you will be motivated to prioritize work and avoid indulging in time-wasting activities.
When you are responsible to manage multiple social media accounts, it’s not easy to keep track of the password for each account. You can neither write it down on a piece of paper due to security risks nor use the same password for every account.
The best way to avoid wasting time looking for passwords is to use password management software. These tools save credentials in a safe way and enable marketers to log in to different accounts without an issue. Moreover, when you need to check social media profiles via any other device, all you need to do is to access your password manager account and it will provide you access in no time.
Practice Safe Scheduling
Behind every successful job is plenty of planning. To succeed as a social marketer, you need to plan the actions you need to take for running marketing campaigns.
Your priority should be to get a content planning calendar for your business. You can easily find a template online or design a calendar that best fits your requirements. With the help of this tool, you can specify the content that needs to be posted across platforms.
In organizations, social media marketers usually plan content for a month in advance. You can make slight changes to this calendar on the go based on current events. You can decide the theme of the day or week and plan which type of content should be posted on different platforms throughout the month. This practice makes sure you can regularly post content for business promotion. If you work with a team of social media marketers, it will be easier to keep them in the loop.
When you track the performance of social media campaigns, you will get to know when the majority of your audience is online and can post content accordingly. But what if that time slot isn’t during standard business hours and you can’t log in at that particular time? This is when scheduling tools will save you from trouble.
SocialPilot, HootSuite, Post Planner, Feedly, and other similar tools can be used to schedule social media posts for a later date or time. You won’t have to worry about forgetting to post content and the software will take care of this task.
That’s Embarrassing: Don’t Let Your Scheduled Post Land at the Wrong Party
Scheduling social media posts via software can make things easier for you and boost productivity. However, this method isn’t fool-proof and can lead to embarrassing mistakes if you aren’t cautious.
Some brands become the talk of the town in a negative way when they accidentally post content with unintentional profanities. Sephora once created a hashtag “#C**tdownToBeauty” when they actually wanted to use the hashtag #CountdownToBeauty. This mistake can happen when you schedule a post for later without proofreading it. It’s ideal to update settings for filtering out unethical phrases and words.
US Airways and a few other businesses caused controversy in the past when they accidentally attached highly explicit images or links to pornographic websites. These mistakes can happen due to minor carelessness, but can attract significant negative publicity which isn’t good.
You don’t want to fall victim to such craziness. So, it’s best to carefully check and recheck the post before you schedule it for later.
When you manage content for multiple social platforms or working as a social media marketer for multiple businesses, there is a higher risk of making mistakes. For instance, you may want to schedule a post via software for Twitter, but accidentally do so for another website. While this mistake may not appear insignificant, it can promote a negative image of your business.
Lastly, it’s a good idea to create social media posts for prominent occasions, events, and festivals, but make sure you schedule it for the right time and date. What if you create an Instagram post for Halloween, but due to the scheduling mistake, it gets posted a day or two after the holiday? You may become the laughing stock for the audience.
If This, Then That? Social Media Automation
If-then concept is a basic principle of computer programming where you specify the system to check for the defined condition and execute the specific block of code only if it meets the condition. IFTTT platform was developed with the intention to provide similar functionality to social media marketers.
This platform allows marketers to create applets for automated content. You can create posts for suitable social websites and specify the trigger point. When the specified action is triggered, the post applet will be published.
However, using the IFTTT model may not be your best bet when it comes to comments. Some businesses use bots to post automated comments. These comments don’t only seem fake, but they also portray a negative image of the company.
Alternatively, it can be used to improve customer service. For instance, you can use this model with a messaging app to facilitate customers. You can specify answers to most common queries that are frequently asked.
For example, when a customer enquires you about your working hours or the prices of your products, they can receive an automated answer to their query. This practice saves time and provides answers to customers without unnecessary delays.
Although automation can make your job easier to some extent, it never works for marketers to create a post and then forget about it. As a result, it may get published at an inappropriate time and seem irrelevant. You should go through the scheduled content from time to time and tweak posts if needed.
Analyze That
If this then that is a valuable automation tool. Not only does it enable you to automate social media posts for business promotion purposes, but you can also use it for personal reasons. For instance, you can use this tool to wish colleagues on their birthdays or work anniversaries.
However, this functionality should be used carefully. This tool posts the same content every time an event takes place. In certain cases, this may get out of hand.
When an existing or potential customer messages a brand, they often receive an automated message where they are addressed with their first name. This may cause an embarrassing situation for businesses in some cases. A few years ago, a brand used this function on Twitter where they were addressed with their user name. But the user had previously changed their profile name with a profane and the tweet made the brand look bad to other users.
Such events aren’t common and don’t happen too often. But they can lead to an embarrassing situation for your business and may deter the customer base. So, before you opt for the IFTTT model, you should evaluate your decision and come up with suitable content that is less likely to lead to controversy.
https://www.cincopa.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-scheduling-video-posts-on-social-media/