Is Social Media Wearing You Down?

Are you trying to get a handle on using social media for your business? But finding it’s wearing you down?

Social media is a fast-paced environment. There’s new content streaming through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds at such a rapid rate. And it’s easy to get lost and feel overwhelmed amongst the noise of it all.

As a small business owner, you probably feel pressure to have an online presence, unless you’re in the 24% or 1 in 4 small business owners who don’t even have a social media presence.

If you don’t think you need one, then have a read of this article by Fortune. Basically it states that not including Facebook, Twitter and others channels in 2015 in your marketing strategy is roughly like saying ten years ago that the internet was just a fad.

Traditional marketing may have worked fine for you before, but now, with all your competitors on social, you need to be there too. The current social media digital transformation needs to be embraced.

If you’ve already started using social media, you’ll know that having an online presence is not just about being on one social platform.

A lot of businesses have two social accounts with many being active on three or more.

Building a strong online presence, generating leads and new business can be difficult if you don’t know how.

It can also be overwhelming because you need to:

1. Come up with new content:

With so much information at our fingertips, people constantly want new and up-to-date content. They don’t want to read the same stuff over and over again. A considerable amount of time needs to be spent preparing content that reflects your audience needs. It needs to provide value and be targeted to answer the key problems you audience are having.

2. Find curated content

An effective content marketing strategy involves sharing a mix of original content as well as posting curated content. Curated content needs to be relevant and hit your audience right where they need it.

3. Post daily

Depending on the social platforms you are using, you will need to be posting daily, especially when you are managing content on multiple platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Knowing that you need to post each day to keep your audience interested means that you feel the pressure to create or find something to share.

4. Post at the right time

If you struggle to find or create content, you’re probably more focused on getting content online, and not worrying about the best time to post. But timing is crucial. If you miss the correct time, then your efforts are wasted as your audience isn’t online. Then when they are next online, your post is so far back in their feed that they aren’t going to come across it anyway.

5. Engage with your audience

Engaging with your followers takes time. If you’ve been busy with your business, then the next time you pop into Facebook there may be questions that need responding. Your followers want a fast response time so if you are organised you’ll be checking this regularly. To keep on top of this can be difficult whilst trying to run a business at the same time.

But, it can take you away from your core business tasks. If you set up alerts then frequent alerts for a new message, like or share on your account can be quite disruptive.

6. Have graphic design skills that don’t suck

Do you spend a lot of time pondering designs, colours and text placement for original graphics for social media posts? It doesn’t need to take hours to create a post that looks good. But, if you find that you just can’t create anything that’s visually appealing remember that putting up a stock picture that doesn’t reflect your post’s message can have the same impact.

7. Keep up with new trends

The social media space is always evolving. You need to be seeking new ways to improve your skills and see what’s working for an audience that quickly becomes saturated with content.

Investigating new trends and implementing this into your social media schedule all take time. One week you may find your posts getting a lot of engagement. The next week you may find that what you were doing is not working. So you need to be onto it and keep up with what’s trending. All of this takes time.

8. Advertise for greater awareness

Advertising on social media in combination with content marketing can make a big impact on your business. Increasing brand awareness, developing leads and successfully converting these into customers can be done.

But if you’ve delved into Facebook and Instagram advertising you know that if you don’t know what you’re doing it can be a costly exercise. If you’re not generating leads and sales, you’ll feel like you’re wasting your time and money.

9. Get an ROI

To grow your business, you need to get an ROI from your social media marketing. This means knowing how to effectively and efficiently use your time on social media to get results.

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