10 Ways to Streamline Your Social Media

10 Ways to Streamline Your Social Media

Social media marketing takes time - a lot of time. The smart way to use social media is to look for ways to streamline your process while not compromising on the attention you pay to your audience and their needs. Here are 10 ways to get more out of social media with a less impact on your time.

1. Identify your most fruitful social media accounts

Not every social network you’ve signed up for is performing well for you. This could be due to anything from a lack of time and resources to your target audience favoring a different platform. The fewer social media accounts you use, the easier it is to manage them on a daily basis.

While there isn’t any specific number of social media accounts you should have, chances are you’ll have the best results by using 2-3 of the most popular ones.

When deciding if a social network is right for your business, ask yourself the following:

1. Is your target audience using it?
2. Are you able to target and boost posts for greater visibility?
3. Does the communications style fit your brand style and needs?
4. Does it integrate well with other social networks and social media apps you’re using?

Once you establish the social networks you’ll focus on, you’ll need the right tools and process to manage them all.

2. Use a social media management tool

Social media management tools may offer several features that can help you coordinate your use of social networks including:

• Providing a dashboard view of all the social networks you manage
• Funneling comments and messages from all your social networks into one place
• Letting you assign comments or messages to team members to respond
• Tracking interactions and engagement
• Measuring results of social media marketing activities

Some popular social media management tools include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Buffer.

3. Use a planner or social media calendar

A social media calendar is a useful tool to map out what messages you want to publish and when you want them to appear. This type of tool is especially helpful when working on a marketing campaign that consists of multiple messages released over time. However, a social media calendar can also be used for daily and repeat messaging and gives you an overall view of what you are communicating to the public.

Most full-service social media management tools have a planner or calendar feature built-in such as Sprout Social. Some social networks include a planner and calendar, such as Meta Business Suites that helps you manage your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Other third-party software and services that provide planning tools include Planoly and Tailwind.

4. Park dormant social media accounts

If you have social media accounts that you no longer want to use, don’t delete them - park them.

Parking a social media account means rendering it inactive but using it as a placeholder to point to other social networks you use. You can do this by changing the bio section, profile image, and any header or cover image to reflect the move.

Use messaging such as "We’ve moved. Please visit us at ”____“ and fill in the blank with the handle or URL for the new or most prominent social network you’re using. By parking unused social media accounts, you hold onto the space that contains your brand name and provide people a path to your current presence.

5. Determine an optimal posting frequency

Most social networks and social media management tools provide an estimate of the better times for you to post in order to organically reach potentially more of your audience. Metrics can show you patterns in usage and engagement.

Some marketing companies offer summaries of best times to post, but it tends to vary by many factors including by the social network being used, the demographics of the users, and external factors including the political climate and other current events.

Pay attention to what the metrics tell you in terms of the habits of your followers and then schedule posts to appear at those optimal times. Don’t shy away from posting at other times, then watch the numbers to see if you can capture additional attention and engagement.

6. Schedule core campaigns and messages

If you use a social media management tool, you can schedule posts based on optimal posting frequency and your audience’s online habits. When you advertise on social networks, scheduling is built right into an ad campaign manager.

While scheduling helps save you time, over-relying on scheduling may limit the success of your social media marketing efforts. Make sure to check in regularly to your social networks directly to ensure your posts are timely and appropriate and take advantage of posting live and in-the-moment to potentially garner more attention.

7. Set up strategic cross posts

When you use a social media management tool, you can more easily post to multiple accounts. You can also configure certain social networks to cross post. For example, if you use both Facebook and Instagram, you can set Instagram up to automatically send a post to your Facebook Page. You can also set up Instagram Stories to automatically show up on your Facebook Page’s Stories section.

While cross-posting does streamline your social media activity, keep in mind that each social network has a different style for their posts. For example, using multiple hashtags is encouraged on Instagram but discouraged for Facebook posts. However, cross posting Stories is compatible.

8. Follow trusted sources of information to repost

While generating and posting original content is a major part of social media marketing, another tactic is to repost from other accounts. This is where following trusted sources of information is important to ensure that what you repost is accurate and useful. Think of this tactic as content curation where your audience looks to you to find valuable information for them, building their trust in you.

9. Save keyword searches

If you are curating content for your followers, conducting searches on search engines and saving them can help you zero in on the right content quickly. Google Alerts is an example of a search saving feature on a search engine. You can use similar features in social media management tools such as on Sprout Social. Some social networks also have a search and save feature such as X.

10. Leverage third-party social media tools

No single social network provides all the tools and features you need to carry out social media marketing tasks. Research and try other tools that can help you streamline your marketing efforts.

Social media dashboards, calendars, planners, and schedulers are some of the more useful third-party social media tools. Others, such as Canva and Adobe Express, can help you create professional-looking visual content even if you are not a designer. You may also benefit from using a project management tool such as Asana or a customer relationship management (CRM) tool like HubSpot or Salesforce.

Look for free trials and free versions of any third-party tool you’re considering in order to test them out before you commit to a subscription.

As you can see, there are many ways to streamline your social media marketing efforts to save time and to keep up with the influx of messaging, not to mention the need to post regularly and frequently for better results.