Social media marketing is a great way to support your business. It offers a unique opportunity to keep your business top of mind, stand out from your competition, and build connections with your customers. The best way to build your social presence is through posting high-quality content on a consistent basis.
Building and maintaining a strong social presence is challenging in and of itself. Add managing the needs of your business, employees, and customers, and you’ve got a pretty full plate.
The good news? Managing multiple social media accounts doesn’t have to be complicated. Continue reading to learn how to simplify posting across social media platforms.
1. Identify Which Channels to Post On
Posting on multiple social platforms is a great way to reach different people in your target audience. However, you want to make sure you focus your efforts efficiently. Creating, scheduling, and managing content on just one social media account can take a lot of time, energy, and resources. The more accounts you have, the more involved the process is — especially considering each platform has different post requirements, best practices, writing styles, ideal posting times, and audiences.
Conduct research to learn which social media platforms your customers use the most, then focus your efforts accordingly. For example, if you’re a furniture retailer, a good amount of your audience may use Facebook. If you spend most of your time posting to other social media platforms or aren’t using Facebook at all, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. Adjust your strategy based on what platforms your target audience uses to maximize your social ROI.
2. Find a Social Media Scheduling Platform
After you’ve identified how many and which social media platforms you will be posting to, find a social media scheduling tool. Social media automation tools give you back valuable time, money, and energy you’d spend posting all of your content manually.
When choosing a social media management tool, consider these factors.
- Value versus cost. While cost is a factor when searching for the right scheduling tool, a factor more important than cost is the value the tool brings. Cost varies between platforms, and often, you get what you pay for. While some platforms may cost more money, they may free up more time for you to allocate back to your business. Choosing a tool because it costs less could end up causing more work for you if it doesn’t have the capabilities you need to succeed.
- Features. Most social scheduling tools are designed to help you publish your content to your social feeds. Some enable you to connect multiple accounts and allow multiple users — streamlining the entire social media management process. Other platforms offer additional capabilities. ThumbStopper® is a social media automation tool that’s specifically designed to foster a partnership between retailers and their brands. If you own a bicycle shop, for example, ThumbStopper helps you benefit from your manufacturer’s visibility and brand recognition by posting brand-curated content directly to your social pages.
- Subscription type. Some scheduling platforms provide free trials and free basic plans. Others have tiered subscriptions that offer different capabilities depending on the plan you choose such as the number of social profiles you can manage, the number of posts you can schedule, analytic insights, and more.
Once you’ve found the social media scheduling tool you’d like to use, link your social media accounts to it. Then when it’s time to schedule, you’ll have everything ready to go.
3. Create a Content Calendar
When it comes to your social media posts, quality matters. Your social media page is a representation of your business. Publish good quality content that represents your business in a professional, polished manner to foster trust amongst your customer base.
Crafting a creative, high-quality, and engaging post can be challenging to do on the spot — even for marketing professionals. While you’re managing the day-to-day needs of your small business, it can be hard to create effective social posts. What’s more, a lack of planning ahead can increase the likelihood of mistakes and or that you’ll forget about posting altogether.
Dedicate time to strategize and plan your content ahead of time — doing so enables you to keep your content timely, valuable, and high-quality. Optimize the content creation and scheduling process by using a content calendar to organize and arrange your content. If you’re posting to multiple platforms, create different posts tailored to each platform within your calendar.
If you’re struggling to come up with unique content, use helpful resources such as free post ideas and inspiration or a social media post builder. You can also revise the content you’ve used in the past and repurpose it for other channels. Use a content creation checklist to guarantee you don’t miss any important steps.
4. Schedule Your Content in Advance
Whether you lack the time or bandwidth, it can be hard to keep a consistent posting schedule — especially when posting to multiple social accounts. However, consistency is key to building customer trust. This is where scheduling your content in advance can help.
After you’ve created and arranged all of your content in your content calendar, scheduling should be as simple as a copy and paste. Schedule your posts at optimal posting times to maximize Reach and Engagement. Some scheduling tools will automatically schedule your content according to optimal posting times, while others will require you to set a time manually. Conduct research to find the best posting times for each of your social platforms.
After your content is scheduled, conduct a quick review to ensure everything is scheduled accurately. Then, enjoy the benefits of social media marketing without having to manage it daily.
5. Use Analytics to Shift Your Strategy
The social media platform itself, or the social media automation software you use, will typically provide analytics on your content’s performance and your follower’s activity. These provide valuable insight into what content your customers like to see, and where you can improve. Look at metrics such as Click-Through Rate, Conversions, Reach, Engagement, and more.
Analyze each post’s performance and shift your content strategy accordingly. For example, as a jewelry retailer, if a high-quality video performs better than a photo, you may want to consider including more videos in future content calendars. Don’t be afraid to try new posting tactics to see what works best for you.
Use ThumbStopper® Simplify Social Media Management
With the many demands of your business, it’s safe to say you’re always looking for ways to save time. ThumbStopper helps hardworking, busy small business owners, like you, achieve more with your social media efforts. We connect retailers with their brands — enabling them to benefit from their high-quality content and visibility, but customizing and automating it to save time, maximize ROI, and build a strong social presence.
We know that your customers need to be able to find you easily — which is why we’re committed to supporting content publishing on all major social media networks. We currently support content publishing on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and are working toward Google My Business posting capabilities.
Contact us today to get started.
