Many of our clients are overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite options that come with social media. Learning to “budget” your social media presence effectively will help you to grow your business and maintain your sanity.
Find Your Target Market
Above all else, you must acknowledge that you can’t be all things to all people. Find your target market and stick with it! If your business is selling custom baby clothes, don’t waste energy trying to reach college students. Having a target market allows you to maintain a great social media presence without necessarily being on every platform. In fact, it is better if your presence is concentrated on a few areas where your business can excel.
Research
How exactly should you choose the areas that to should concentrate on? In a word, research. Here is a crash course in audience relationships to social media:
Different social media platforms cater not only to different generations, but also different demographics.
- Instagram is generally accepted by Millennials.
- Facebook has an expansive reach, but adults over forty tend to follow updates from Facebook more frequently.
- Twitter has a wide age range of users; only about half of the world’s Twitter users are under thirty.
- Men seem to appreciate the microblog style of Twitter allowing fast-paced and pointed updates.
- Women tend to gravitate toward Instagram and Facebook.
To read more about target audiences, check out this article from Investopedia
How to Stay Active without Being On Your Phone All the Time
Now that you’ve figured out who your target audience is and discovered the social media platforms that your target audience is using, let’s take a look at how you can stay active on social media without being constantly glued to your phone.
Using square images will allow you to use your photos across the board with ease. Square proportions ensure that your entire photo will be visible, regardless of the platform you use.
5Schedule posts in advance for Twitter and Instagram using apps like Buffer and Later, respectively. These apps are an incredible resource allowing you to schedule days or even weeks of posts at a time.
On Twitter, be sure to repeat posts every few days because the life cycle of a Tweet is so short.
As wonderful as it would be to schedule posts and check out until you needed to create new posts, Jason Clegg from Convert with Content has an insightful warning to post planners. He says, “Don’t make the mistake of trying to automate your presence. When people tweet at you or engage your brand on any other social network, you need to show up to the virtual party and make conversation. You need to be engaged. You absolutely cannot fake this part of the process.” Read the full article here.
Still Overwhelmed?
If you are still feeling overwhelmed by the mysterious world of social media, start small. Pick your favorite platform and the platform that your audience is using. Concentrate your efforts on growing your social media presence for those two sites. Stand by your business’s identity, and engage your followers even if it is only for five or ten minutes a day.
Learn more about our Small Business Coaching that can offer a personalized approach to your social media.
Read more on Social Media Time Management from Forbes and The Huffington Post.