5 minute read
How To Work Smarter, Not Harder On Social Media By Rachel Medlook
You know I like to keep it real with you all and today is no different. If you keep saying you “don’t have time for social media”, then it’s not going to work hard for your business!
Right now, especially those of you navigating lockdowns, should be harnessing your online platforms to not only keep your clients engaged but have them ‘adding to cart’ on the regular.
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Now, I get it. Social media eats time for breakfast. We say we’ll spend 30-minutes on it and #nekminute, it’s been 3 hours and we’re down a rabbit hole of tutorials and cat videos. When it comes to using it for marketing, it’s all about working smarter, not harder, to ensure that maximising every online connection doesn’t become a burden or total headache for you and your team.
By this point, you might be thinking, “well that’s easier said than done, lady!” which is why I’m here to share my tried and tested ways of working smarter, not harder on social media. These are strategies I implement in my own business, as well as the salons I support, to ensure that when it’s time to create, schedule and reap the benefits of engaging copy, we’re left feeling empowered and in control of our marketing game plan.
BOOK YOURSELF A SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULING DATE
You wouldn’t skip on a Body Pump class you’ve got booked in your diary, right? Okay, bad example but the point is, book your social media planning in your calendar so that the time has already been allocated.
Working smarter on social media begins with being accountable to yourself and your business. Fondly named the Social Media Scheduling Date, I choose a day and time each month to plan, produce and schedule my content. Doing this monthly means I only need to block out one chunk of time in my calendar that is totally dedicating to setting myself up for success.
There’s no rule for how frequently you do this but however you book in your scheduling dates, make sure you bring you’re A-Game. It’s a time to step out of the day-to-day of your business for even a few hours and think about what promotions you have coming up, any seasonal events you need to cover, any products or packages you’re wanting to push that month and go through the likes of before and after pictures, client reviews and team photos that you’ve accumulated on your phone. Before you know it, you’ve got a month’s worth of posts ready to roll and you can get back to doing what you do best! colouring tools, investing in the right online tools can make a huge difference. For me, the priority is a social media scheduling app.
Investing in a scheduling tool is an absolute game changer when it comes to working smarter, not harder on social media as it allows you to upload your content (written during your social media scheduling date), and have it automatically posted. It means you don’t have to worry about remembering to post when you’re flat out on the salon floor or winding down after a massive Saturday trading day.
I love using Planoly as my scheduling tool as it allows you to also store and schedule your hashtags. This means, when you’re scheduling all your posts for the month, you can select from your collections of hashtags and have them automatically publish as the first comment. It’s incredibly affordable and can auto-schedule across the two main platforms you’re operating off - Facebook and Instagram.
If you love a freebie, Facebook Creator Studio is where it’s at. Whilst it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles like hashtag scheduling, it is a free way to auto-schedule your content on Facebook and Instagram.
WHEN IN DOUBT, OUTSOURCE
THE ANSWERS ARE IN THE INSIGHTS
If you haven’t looked at your Facebook and Instagram insights, I highly suggest getting familiar with them. Your insights take away the guesswork of how you think your pages are performing and instead, give you clear data of how they’re actually performing.
I recommend pairing your Social Media Scheduling Date with a visit to your insights as this is a sure-fire way of sparking content inspiration. Why? Because your insights will tell you what your audience is vibing with the most! Both Facebook and Insights allow you to see both your best performing content and when your audience interacted with your page the most.
For example, if you jump into insights and discover that your best performing content is tutorials or styling videos and your least performing content is inspirational quotes, then you know what direction your content needs to take. Furthermore, if you’re posting at 9am but your insights tell you that your audience is actually hanging out on socials at 8pm, then you can harness this data and tweak your posting times. Together, these two pieces of data point you in the direction of better performing pages and have you working smarter, not harder on social media.
I get it. Not everyone loves putting pen to paper. I’m passionate about businesses still running their own social media platforms because that’s where the magic of authenticity happens but there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing the elements that you just can’t stand!
Social media support options such as caption copywriting, hashtag research and even overall content strategies are available to set you up with the right foundations to work smarter on socials. If you’re not ready to hand these over to a thirdparty, consider getting your team involved in the planning of your social content.
This could be part of your weekly team meetings or a larger strategy day where you collectively come up with a list of content ideas and task each team member with what they’re responsible for creating. You never know what amazing ideas they’ll come up with that haven’t even crossed your mind!
