Time-Saving Social Media Strategies
In today’s modern age, social media can be critical for both attracting new clients and keeping existing ones. At the same time, however, maintaining a highly visible presence can quickly become a resource black hole, draining your time and money. The good news is that by leveraging a few efficient tactics, you can streamline the management of your brand’s social media to help ensure that it benefits rather than overshadows your other vital business functions.
Use AI
While a winning social media strategy necessitates consistency and frequency, it doesn’t have to monopolize your focus. An AI tool like ChatGPT or Google Gemini can enable you to streamline your approach by automating repetitive tasks such as writing social media posts and captions. In turn, you can free up time for bigger-picture projects or engaging with your audience, potentially maximizing your impact and boosting your results.
To get the most out your preferred AI helper, work on honing the prompts you input. Be very detailed about what you’re looking for, including the format; otherwise, you might end up with something potentially not useful, such as a bulleted list. For example, if you want to post about an open house for your real estate listing, you could type “Write a paragraph about my open house on Saturday, September 15, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. A few of the home’s best features are its four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, updated kitchen, hardwood floors, and fenced backyard”—and it will spit out a post in seconds.
From there, you can send follow-up prompts asking the AI tool to make additions or adjustments. If you want hashtags, simply type “Provide relevant hashtags for this post,” and it will give you a few to consider, such as #OpenHouse, #UpdatedKitchen, and #MoveInReady. Gemini will even categorize the hashtags into groups like “Property Specific Features” and “Target Audience” to help you pick the ideal ones for your purpose.
Another option is to upload a photo of the home’s front exterior, requesting a caption for it. You might get something like: “Entertain in style in this stunning home featuring a sparkling new kitchen and four spacious bedrooms. #FamilyHome #EntertainersDream #FencedBackyard.” Not bad—you could keep this caption if you like or tweak it to best serve your needs.
Utilize other online tools
In addition to AI, there are numerous tools you can use to make creating and posting content a breeze. Consider, for instance, a social media management platform like Buffer or Hootsuite that serves as a central hub from which you can schedule and publish posts across multiple accounts at once. This way, you can prepare content weeks or even months at a time for maximum efficiency. (Just make sure to revisit your schedule periodically to add or adjust any timely content.) These platforms also offer AI helpers that can write posts and hashtags, monitor the engagement of your posts on each of your accounts, and alert you when you get new followers or comments. With such simple and automated features, you can fine-tune and modify your strategy in the span of minutes.
Go evergreen and repurpose
One of the more difficult aspects of content creation is constantly having to come up with fresh ideas. To work in a break for yourself and your team now and then, develop evergreen content, or social media posts and reels that can be used any time of the year and don’t expire. These can be slipped in among your timelier content whenever you need to fill your posting schedule.
For example, you can create TikTok videos highlighting your most popular products or blogs outlining how-to tips relevant to your field. If you’re a financial professional, focus on helpful pointers for retirement planning; if you’re a landscaper, offer your best advice for keeping a lawn green. You could then use this evergreen content repeatedly across multiple platforms as needed, being sure to allow a significant amount of time to elapse before reposting it.
Besides creating new content, you can also look over your old content to determine what can be recycled into new blogs or social media posts or videos. Naturally, it’s best to reuse content that previously had high engagement; review your Google Analytics or Meta Business Suite’s Instagram and Facebook insights to identify top content to repurpose.
Once you have your starting point, assess how best to convert the content to new formats. This is another great way to use AI. Take the platform Lumen5—in mere minutes, you could create an engaging video from a popular blog post about how to lower insurance premiums. Simply paste the URL for your post into the prompt box to receive a professional-looking video complete with royalty-free images and music. Then all you have to do is post it to the social media platform of your choice, whether it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube.
Outsource
If you find you’re still struggling to balance your social media management with your other duties, contracting a marketing company to create and post engaging content for you can be a big time-saver. This option can free you from the hassle of having to continually research trends and generate ideas, potentially giving you the flexibility to devote your resources to other business areas. You might even find outsourcing your social media to be less expensive than hiring your own personnel for these purposes.
Managing social media can sometimes feel overwhelming, but by embracing AI technology and scheduling tools and seeking assistance when needed, you can establish a robust online presence that complements, not consumes, your business.
TAKE ACTION:
Pick an AI tool of your choice, and experiment with ways you can use it for social media to free up your valuable time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Luke Acree is an authority on leadership, a lead-generation specialist, and a referral expert who has helped more than 100,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their companies. He hosts Stay Paid, a sales and marketing podcast, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Foundr.com.