Social media has lately become the ultimate platform for almost every marketer to grow their business and reach out to a wider audience. That’s the reason every company is investing both their time and money in it. Nowadays, numerous social media tools are available in the market, which allows you to make most of the social media business.

Although Social media is great for any business, it is not easy to manage everything and stay updated with the latest social media trends. Social media does not magically perform everything on its own. Users have to efficiently manage all their social media accounts which can be done through strategic planning and analyzing. 

Tips to Manage Social Media Business in Only 18 Mins

Many small businesses and marketers are unable to utilize their social media accounts because unlike big companies; they don’t have a dedicated team and/or enough budget. So,  if you are one of those who has to manage multiple activities and is always short on time, this blog is what you need. You can now efficiently manage all your social media handles in just 18 minutes! Not even half an hour, just within 18 minutes! Seems impossible? But it’s true. Let’s see how.  

In this blog, we have mentioned an eighteen minutes plan to maximize your work in less time. 

5 minutes of Social Listening 

When you start right, you finish right. Begin your social management with five minutes of social listening. It basically involves examining everything on your feed that relates to your brand, product or services. It includes keywords, hashtags, mentions, messages from your brand as well as your competitors.

This observation will enable you to improve your marketing strategy and provide better customer service. Social listening also includes observing your competitors’ behavior.

Here are some key points to consider when social listening:

• Brand mentions
• Product or service mentions
• Specific hashtags and/or keywords
• Competitors and partners
• Industry news and trends

If your business has a physical location or storefront, use geo-search to filter for local conversations. That will help you focus on customers that are close to you, and the local topics they care about.

To make your work easy, you can choose from several social media tools that offer the social listening feature. Some of the most used tools are Hootsuite, HubSpot, Sprout social, buffer and more.

3 minutes of Analyzing and planning

After a good observation, you can start to plan or analyze your marketing strategies. Spending 3 minutes analyzing will help you understand the process. Below are some pointers that you should keep in mind while analyzing:

Feedback

If your audience is sharing feedback about your brand, then go through them thoroughly. See if there are repetitive trends or things that need to change or improve in your products or services. For example, if you offer food delivery and people complain about the packaging, then take immediate actions to improve it and update your audience about the new change.

Trends

Keep a check on the latest trends of your industry. New trends will help you find new opportunities and thereby help you engage the audience. It might also inspire you for your next post content or an ad campaign. Or it can help you launch a new product or a service. You can get a view of your brand activity through Onclusive’s platform. With the help of this tool, you’ll be able to get the most complete and accurate data that are needed for your business.

Purchase Intent

Social listening does not only mean to track conversation but it also involves finding new customers. To attract new consumers, track phrases or topics which the prospective customers might use. For example, let’s say you sell clothes online so in the month of January you look for keywords like winter wear, vacation outfits etc.

Updates

While analyzing, always keep an eye on stuff you can add to your social media page, like new and potential keywords. Also, check if new competitors are engaging or whether people are making common mistakes while mentioning your brand.

2 minute for Content calendar

Spend at least two minutes on your social media Content Calendar each day to view what you or any of the team members have planned to post. Proofread text on the posts so that there are no typing errors, also double-check visual contents like photos and videos for any mistakes.

We hope you have created your social media marketing plan as well as set up your content calendar. However, if you haven’t already, it’s alright, you can start now. Each month, spare an hour to brainstorm new ideas and prepare your content calendar accordingly.

If you have enough budget, you can outsource content creation or use a paid tool. If not, there are also a number of free tools available in the market. But, if you want to do everything by yourself, go for it! Just work on a solid strategy. 

3 minutes to Schedule

Scheduling posts is a great way to save time when you can’t revisit all your social media sites multiple times a day. Pick the right scheduling tool and schedule several posts at once. Scheduling posts is easy and hardly takes 2 to 3 minutes. All you have to do is add your content on the scheduling tool, choose a time to publish and schedule.

Also, it’s very important to choose the right time for schedule posting. Select a time when more people are likely to be online. The best time to post varies for each social media site. For in-depth details, you can take help of analytics tools like Google Analytics that gives you all kinds of information about your audience. And the best thing about it is that it’s a free tool.

Editable presentation slide template of three dial charts with sample text

Facebook: At Facebook, schedule one or two posts for a day. Share good visual messages. You can share longer stories, add links, heading, description whatever you like.

Twitter: When scheduling tweets, you have to make sure to space out so that your audience does not perceive it as ‘spamming’. Schedule Tweets with different formats for instance switch from photos to videos and place links and check which one of them is performing the best. Also don’t forget to provide appropriate hashtags and mention wherever and whenever you can, especially when you share content from an external source.

Instagram: Instagram allows the user to be as creative as possible. If you are launching new products and services, try to create maximus awareness about it by scheduling creative  photos, stories, and videos. Instagram is the best medium to engage with the audience as it allows live story streamings, polls, fun question box, and more. You can even schedule long videos for up to an hour on Instagram’s IGTV app. Share behind the scenes photos and videos, or talk about your business to increase user engagement.

LinkedIn: Want to hire new employees or want to engage with a professional audience? Linkedin social media is what you need. At LinkedIn, schedule content with a more formal tone. You may use the platform to share leadership thoughts from an executive in your company.

5 minutes to Engage

Last but not the least is spending at least five minutes to engage with your audience. Creating more engagement is the key to success for any brand on social media. Many statistics and a study done by Edelman show that 9 out of 10 users are willing to interact with brands using the social platform.

To engage with more audiences, you have to remain proactive on social media. If your audience has a positive experience of your sites, they are more likely to make a purchase as well as recommend your brand to others. Seventy percent of brand recommendations come from positive consumer experience.

Here are some of the major ways to interact with your audience:

1. Respond to user questions as soon as you can; you can also create pre-composed responses to save time. 
2. Pre-composed messages come handy when you have to share the same thing repeatedly, like an event data, product description, shop hours, etc. However, using too many pre-composed messages can kill authenticity. So use it moderately. 
3. If you are tagged in any content, like and comment on it.
4. Follow relevant audience like social media influencers.
5. Share or repost user-generated content.
6. Chats and videos on Instagram and Facebook is the best way to update your audience about new launches, behind the scenes and more. You can have a Q/A session where you can answer common user questions on live chat.

Conclusion

One of the best times to engage with your audience is shortly after you post on your page. If you select a good time for your post, i.e., when most of your audience is online, you will get a good response as well.

This was all about managing social media quickly and efficiently, so now you can go back to being the multitasking employee of your company and still manage social media handles like a pro.

Author Bio:

Bhavik Soni is a Creative Writer at Auto Monkey. We provide an original analysis of the latest happenings in the social media industry. Connect with Latest Social Media Trends and News plus tips on Twitter, Facebook and other social tools on the web.