It’s easy to get sucked into the blue light. To look at your phone or computer screen and two hours later realize you’ve accomplished nothing. Admit it; you’ve gone down the rabbit hole of checking your social media accounts only to never come up for air. We all have.
Here are some tips for using social media to help you stay focused on social media.
- Separate Business and Personal. When you go to check your business accounts, do not peek at your feed. You’ll see what Sally is eating or that Joe needs a recommendation for a Chiropractor, and you will be inclined to comment, and it’s a slippery slope. It’s like saying you’re just going to have one drink with a friend. You know it will lead to more.
- Avoid Multitasking. When you’re working on social media, only work on social media. Try to keep your tasks separate. Keep it Real Social uses Toggl to track our time. This helps us to focus on the task at hand. We start and stop the time for each task/project, which helps us eliminate the multi-tasking and wasted time.
- Have a Daily Plan. Have a daily plan and schedule your social media tasks. I always recommend doing this first thing in the morning. Set your timer for 30 minutes while you’re having your morning coffee to check your social media accounts for your business. This is when you can reply to comments, like other pages, and engage. Schedule time weekly to create content, create graphics, schedule posts, and post to social media. This could be every Monday morning for one hour, but it’s scheduled and on your calendar.
- Do Your Work First. Essential business tasks need to always come first. If you have a client project due, that’s the priority. Any money-making activity takes precedence.
- Avoid Chats. Turn off chats in your social media accounts. Instead, check messages when you’ve scheduled time for social media. It is very easy to see a chat and get caught up in a conversation that will take you away from your money-making activities. Please note that if chat is a money-making activity for you, you’ll, of course, want to engage.
- Recognize Unproductive Activity. Whether it seems relevant to your topic or not, always ask yourself if you are staying on task.
- Study and Apply: One at a Time. When it comes to social media marketing, you don’t need to learn how to do everything at once. Take it one step at a time.
- Time Saving Tools. Use social media integration tools to streamline your processes. I’ve written a great article about this over here.
- Be Metric Driven. Set goals and measure progress, so you know you’re on track. The team at Keep it Real Social runs social media metric reports monthly and tracks the data month to month to compare, contrast, evaluate, strategize, pivot, and repeat what is working for our clients and recognize what needs to be improved or changed. (Sign up below for our newsletter and start with a free DIY social media audit worksheet for all subscribers!)
- Hire Help. Social media marketing for small business is not easy. It takes a lot of time, talent, strategy, and experience. If you find that you need help and aren’t seeing the results you desire, let’s connect. We’ve been helping small businesses use social media marketing since 2007, and we can help you too. You can focus on your business, and we’ll focus on growing your business online.
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