Boost Your Social Media Presence By Saving Time With Automation
Seems like every business is on social media these days. Which is the whole reason you’ve established a social media presence as well, right? If you answered that with a quick ‘yes’ and nothing more, you’re not giving your social strategy enough thought. Granted, you definitely need to have what your competitors have in order to keep up in your industry. But business success isn’t about keeping up. It’s about finding better, faster, smarter ways to do what others do – so you can carve a niche for yourself and create a unique competitive advantage. You need your social media presence to be working for you. That could mean a multitude of different things to different companies and people. Do you want to further your brand awareness? Create a stronger dialogue with your customer? Promote helpful content and webinars to establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry? Social media can help you do all of that. But you have to build a strong enough social presence first. In this post, I’ll show you how leveraging social media automation can save you time to increase your visibility even if you have no social media presence. You’ll build an increased social media presence by understanding: Why it’s important to understand your “why” when it comes to social media The ripple effect of responding (or not) on social media and how it can help or hurt your brand The need to refresh your status updates by considering these 5 things Why having a blog is important for your social media presence And more Ready to find out how to increase social media presence? Social media automation = more time to achieve your social media goals When I tell people they need to spend more time building out their company’s social media channels, they look at me like I’m nuts. They say, “I’m always posting stuff”, “Yeah, I hired an intern for that”, “I started a Facebook page a while ago”, but mostly: “I barely have time to post updates, let alone do anything beyond that.” I get it. I used to make the same excuses. But that was before I created Bulkly. Imagine uploading all of your social updates at once and then setting them on autopilot vs. creating list after list of daily updates, then scheduling each one by hand. Bulkly is a social media automation tool that does just that, eliminating those daily social media to-dos that are taking up so much of your time. Already a Bulkly user? You rock! Interested? Learn more here. And social media automation isn’t just limited to scheduling posts. Depending on the social network it might make sense to automate some following and unfollowing of users or even automate reporting. There’s really no limit to the things you can automate if it makes sense. In fact, many Zapier experts have developed complex workflows to streamline various aspects of social media management. Best of all, it’s not complicated. And it costs a whole lot less time and money than hiring another employee to do the exact same things. How to increase your presence on social media By using Bulkly or another social media management tool to automate your daily social to-dos, you can stop making excuses and start spending the time needed to work on things that can help you build a better social media presence. Ready to learn what those things are? Let’s get started. 1. Revisit your social media strategy. I can see the eye rolls already. But I’m serious. When was the last time you sat down and really gave thought to your “big picture” social strategy? Be honest. Probably a few months ago at least, right? Then maybe it’s time to review it to make sure that you’re doing the right things for the right reasons. My favorite way to conduct a thorough and productive strategy review? Work backwards by first finding my ‘why’. What’s the ‘why’ behind your social media strategy? Why are you trying to establish a social presence? And why do you want to improve your social media presence? Your ‘why’ is your end goal, your purpose, the main driver behind everything you do on social, from writing update copy to engaging with followers. Some businesses are trying to further brand awareness. Others are looking to learn more about their customers for market research. Still others are solely focused on driving traffic to their website. Only you know your answer. Got it? Great. Once you’ve pinpointed your ‘why’ (hopefully you knew it right away), it’s time to walk through your campaigns, posting schedules, content shared, etc. to make sure they’re all working toward furthering that purpose. For example, let’s say your ‘why’ is to improve brand awareness. As you’re looking through your recent campaigns, you’re seeing that their execution has missed the mark a little. Most of the efforts supporting these campaigns have been heavily focused on driving traffic to your website. While more website traffic can definitely help further your brand image and persona, traffic should be secondary to your main goal, your ‘why’ = establishing brand awareness. Or maybe not. Maybe there’s a reason your efforts have strayed from your originally planned direction. Maybe it’s time to revisit your ‘why’ itself. Maybe it needs to change based on changes to your business. Or maybe your team just needs you to point them back in the right direction. Either way, taking the time to work backward from your goals to your day-to-day execution gives you a better perspective on your overall social strategy so you can make necessary changes and avoid missing the mark before it’s too late. 2. Increase your level of engagement. People really underestimate the power of conversation. The things you say and how you say them help develop others’ impressions of who you are as a person. If you’re friendly, funny and helpful, people are probably going to associate your personality with those traits. Likewise, if you’re grumpy, rude or dismissive, […]
