Any business owner can tell you that social media marketing can be time-consuming—and even a bit overwhelming. After all, there are only so many hours in a day, and finding time to monitor your social media channels can be a real time suck. How do you figure out how much time you should spend—and what you should do with that time?
The best way to approach social media marketing for your business is to have a strategy, define your marketing goals, and evaluate your resources. Let’s take a look at bringing all three together.
Have a Strategy
Using social media marketing for your business starts with three basic questions:
- What are your marketing goals?
- Who is your audience?
- What resources do you have available to devote to a social media marketing campaign?
Of course there are plenty of details that go along with each of these items, but attempting to answer these questions will help you determine how you should spend your time on social media marketing.
Define Your Marketing Goals
You need to set clear goals when defining your marketing plan, and this specifically refers to inbound marketing SMART goals. The acronym SMART is easy to remember—and here is what it stands for:
- Specific. This refers to a number you can define. In this case, it could be the number of new social media followers you would like to see.
- Measurable. Figure out how you will measure results before you get started.
- Attainable. You want to pick a goal that is challenging but not so lofty as to be impossible. Your goals could be increasing followers by a certain amount or increasing traffic to your website by a certain percentage.
- Relevant. Be honest about the relevance of your goals. If it’s too unrealistic, it’s easy to just give up.
- Time-bound. This is actually a made-up word, but it ties together the SMART acronym. It refers to selecting a deadline for your goals.
Evaluate Your Resources
This is where you sit down and determine how many hours you have each week in your department (even if the entire department is just yourself). Assess how your team currently spends on social media. You can do this in a spreadsheet or try a time-tracking software like
Toggl or Hours. If you do this for a couple of weeks, it should give you a good picture of how much time is currently being spent on social media. You might be surprised to find out that as much as 25 percent of you and your team’s time is being spent with social media marketing.
Once you have this information, you can develop a clearer picture of social media marketing. If you have a limited amount of time for social media marketing, make sure you are focusing that time on where your customers are. For example, if your customers are younger, they might be on TikTok. Older customers are probably using Facebook and Twitter.
Contact Omnia Marketing Systems for Help With Social Media Marketing
Are you still feeling overwhelmed by social media marketing? Contact an experienced company to help ensure your strategy works for your business.
Contact us today!