Have you ever gone on Instagram to share a post for your business only to find yourself 2 hours later stuck in the scroll?
Trust us, you’re not alone. As enjoyable as going down the occasional social media rabbit hole can be, it isn’t always practical or the best use of your time, especially when you’re trying to build your business online.
Today we’re sharing 7 time saving hacks to help you with your social media marketing.
Schedule posts
Scheduling posts saves you time in a number of ways. First, scheduling allows you to set up your posts ahead of time in a third party tool like Ripl and not worry about getting online at certain times to share a post.
The second way scheduling saves you time on social media is because it frees you up from needing to scramble to figure out what to post. This is because with scheduling, content is already pre-planned. Scheduling posts requires forethought and planning to create multiple posts at one time.
With scheduled posts, you have more time to focus on other parts of your social media like engaging with your audience and tracking your analytics.
Repurpose and expand on old content
The life of a post doesn’t end when you post it only one time. Repurpose and expand on old content to save your time from having to brainstorm every time you want to create new content.
Here are some ideas to consider when thinking about repurposing content:
Share to another platform with some minor tweaks as necessary
Use the content from a popular text-only post to turn it into a video
Go deeper on specific points from checklist and how-to posts
Show your product from a new perspective
Here is an example of how we have used an old post to inspire a newer one.
Our first post above shares the importance of having an optimized bio on your social media profiles and the second post below shares tips on how to optimize your bio specifically.
Reshare your customer’s content
Save time with content creation by showcasing user-generated content (UGC) to your feeds. This provides a win-win situation for your marketing and community building.
Using UGC saves you time by not having to create your own original content and your customer gets to be featured and feel like a valued member of your online community. To get more UGC, ask customers to tag you, use a specific hashtag, or even do a callout in your stories.
Bonus benefit: Featuring more UGC is likely to build trust and online credibility as well. One study found that 88% of shoppers used UGC during their purchase decision-making process.
Create content from your FAQ
Save yourself time by creating content that acts as a resource you can point your followers to. This result is two-fold because it saves your customers time as well. Not only should this be easier content for you to create, it also establishes your expertise and shows why people should follow you. Your customers save time because they don’t have to go hunting for answers, your content puts the answers in front of them.
Start with common questions about your industry or the ones you commonly get in your inbox.
Go on social media with a purpose
Having a purpose for every time you open a social media app is another effective way to manage your time. Before going on ask yourself what you are going to get on for or what you hope to accomplish?
Try setting specific goals like engaging with your audience, posting to stories, or reviewing analytics. Not sure? Our free social media playbook is here to help you.
Bonus tip: For those that have a purpose but still fear falling into the social media trap, try setting a timer to remind you to get off the app.
Focus on your best-performing platforms
Save time on social media by focusing only on the platforms you’re seeing results on.
In order to make an informed decision on which platforms are working the best for you, make sure you have clear and defined social media marketing goals in place.
If you don’t have goals yet here are some places to pay attention to:
Where are you getting the most engagement?
Where are your leads coming from?
Is your business better suited for some platforms more than others?
Use templates
Templates are a secret weapon for saving time on your social media marketing. Not only do they save time, they make your account look polished and professional.
Ripl has templates for just about anything—social media posts, ads, stories, and videos to showcase your products or services. Ripl’s pre-made templates make it easy to create a variety of cohesive content that you can be confident sharing to your social channels. Once you start creating, you can save even more time by starting from previous posts. Check out our latest collections and start creating today!
Start using these time saving hacks for your social media marketing today! For more easy ways to get the most out of your marketing, check out 12 quick social media marketing tips for small businesses.
