4 Social Media Foundations for the Busy Entrepreneur
We’ve all been there. Where you feel like you’ve spent nearly all day on Facebook or Instagram yet you haven’t accomplished a darn thing. That’s the worst feeling!
Now wouldn’t it be great to log into your social media account spend 30 minutes really connecting with potential clients and partners? I’m going to share 5 foundations you can start putting into place today that will save you hours every week.
- Delegate – there are definitely tasks you can outsource to a trained professional. You don’t want to outsource your personality of course. But consider tasks that need to be done, but not by you personally. Here’s a few ideas: weekly or monthly post scheduling, customer service questions to your profiles, JV or affiliate requests, posting events and inviting friends and fans, and inbox management. So you can still write the content and have the creativity you crave, and the technicial implementing can be done for you – saving you hours every week.
- Boundaries – put in place specific rules for yourself (and your team if it applies). If you put some delegation into place be sure there are clear guidelines in place so both you and your team are clear on what needs to be handled and how it is to be handled so nothing falls between the cracks.
What does that mean? If you have a professional scheduling your social media posts, have a process in place with clear to collaborate on the content. I personally love to use Google Docs for this piece.
Perhaps your team is also handling customer service and inbox management; should requests be handled online or should the prospect be directed to email – or will it be a combo? In what cases should email be necessary? How often is your team to check your inbox for messages each week? Are they to forward them to you for review, or respond to some if possible and keep you in the loop with a weekly update?
- Lists – create several lists for your accounts to save time everyday. While Facebook Friend Lists don’t exist anymore (BUMMER!), you can make it work in other ways. I personally have an event in my Google Calendar labeled Facebook and in the description of the event are links to pages and people that I want to regularly engage with. Even the Facebook Feed (AKA the algorithm) is out of our control, find other ways to achieve your goals.
On Twitter you can have lists as well. I have both public and private Twitter Lists. Once you have the lists in place be sure to start using them. I save a TON of time by using these more often then scrolling down the live home feeds of each network.
With Instagram you can use Collections to create the same grouping of accounts. You won’t get a feed of posts for each collection, but you will save a bunch of time by having all the people and business you want to connect with in one easy place.
Here’s a few ideas to get you started with your own lists; thought leaders, close friends and family, joint venture partners, and possibly Facebook pages you want to closely follow.
- Vetting – this is a big time saver for me. You don’t have to accept all friend requests or follow everyone that follows you. (Read that one again.)
For your time and mental clarity only follow accounts that you want to see their content and keep in touch with. Your time is valuable, protect it my friend.
So the next time you recieve a notification of a friend request or new follower – do not automatically hit the accept or follow button. Go to the profile and see who they are and what they’re interests are. If you have a mutul interest go forth, otherwise you do not have to accept or follow. This doesn’t make you a bad person, it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. You’re not breaking some code of conduct – promise.
Start working on at least two of these items this week. And if you like the other ideas, block time on your calendar to work on them soon. Once you have these 4 foundations in place you will see time wasting dwindle down to almost nothing.