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How to Decrease Your Time on Social Media and be Productive *

How to Decrease Your Time on Social Media and be Productive *

by | Dec 9, 2020 | Social Media

How to Keep Social Media From Sucking Up all of Your Time

 

As bloggers, social media is a key tool for promoting our blogs.  Social media helps us to grow our blogs.  Social media allows us to interact with our readers.  Social Media gives us the opportunity to build our communities.  Social media keeps us informed about current events and news in our niche.  

However, social media can also be a massive drain on the limited time available to us.  The big challenge for all bloggers is time management.  How can we keep social media from sucking up all of our limited available time?

 

Two Ways Your Social Media Habits Could Impact Your Productivity

 

Avoid Spending Unscheduled Time on Social Media

 

Are you the blogger who spends large chunks of time on social media networks?  I understand that it is important to tending to your own community.  You do need to engage with other communities by leaving comments, and contributing to online discussions.  It is important to increase your exposure and become known in your niche.  However, you should schedule time for social media engagement.  Then stick to your schedule.

 

Avoid Constantly Checking Your Social Media for Comments

 

Don’t be the blogger who is constantly checking their social media.  Even using small amounts of time throughout your day adds up.  These small distractions can quickly add up to wasting a significant amount of time during your day.  Again, your social media time needs to be scheduled.  Stick to your schedule.  If you are unable to complete your tasks on social media, perhaps you need to schedule more time for those tasks.

 

How Does Your Social Media Behavior Impact Your Productivity?

 

How does this behavior on social media impact their productivity?  Social media impacts your productivity in three key ways:

 

  1. If the time you spend on social media outweighs your gains from using your social media networks.
  2. Single tasking can increase your blogging productivity while reducing your stress.  Research from the American Psychological Association has shown that multi tasking can cost as much as 40 percent of someone’s productive time.
  3. Dividing your time between writing and social media takes you much longer to write your blog post because your mind is not 100% on the task at hand. Focus on writing while ignoring everything else.

 

Reduce the distraction of social media.  You need to reduce the above impacts and increase your blogging productivity.  It doesn’t mean that you can’t be on social media.  It just means you need to take a more planned and proactive approach to how you go about it.  Following are two actions you can take to enhance your productivity:

 

Create a Social Media Strategy That Reduces Distractions

It can be very tempting to sign up to every social media network.  Spending time daily on each of them is one way to create a social media presence, but it is unlikely to be successful.  

If you want to maximize the time you spend on social media, you need a defined social media strategy for your blog.  Your social media strategy doesn’t have to be complex and detailed.  But it needs to cover these key points:

 

How much time per day/week can you spend on social media?

You have to determine how much time you have available for blogging.  Then you have to decide how much of that time you need to spend on social media.  The amount of time will vary between bloggers.  There will be times when you may increase your time on social media to support your blogging goals.  The key is setting how much time you will spend on social media and then sticking to it.

 

What Networks are Best for Your Social Media Engagement?

 

Many bloggers sign up to most social media networks to have a presence on them.  However, unless you have a Social media manager, you may not have the time needed to truly engage on all of them.

Instead it may be preferable to select 2 or 3 and focus on them.  It’s more important to create great content to share and spend time building your communities on the best networks for showcasing your blog and business.

The benefits from having a more effective presence on fewer social media networks will be greater than spreading your efforts thinly over lots of networks.

 

You Should Define Your Goals for Each Social Media Network

 

You should have a goal for what you hope to achieve on each social media network.  It’s important to know why you are even on each social network.  For example, my goal for Twitter is to be seen as an expert in my niche.  I want to use Twitter to create freelance and media opportunities.

Facebook is about building a community where I can share high quality articles I curate specifically for them.  Through helping them as much as I can, I am building up trust that will hopefully lead to them purchasing my products and services.

 

You Need to Determine Your Posting Frequency for Each Social Network

 

It’s tough to stand out and be noticed on all of the social networks.  But that doesn’t mean posting more stuff will get you more notice.  Buffer recently changed their Facebook social media strategy with great success.

Buffer cut their posting frequency by more than 50% on Facebook and decided to focus on quality over quantity.  Their results underwent a dramatic shift.  More than the most optimistic social media manager couldn’t have expected.

Even though they were posting less, their Facebook reach and engagement began to increase.

 

How Changing Our Social Media Scheduling Reaped Rewards

 

  • I determined how frequently I post to each network and the type of content I share.  I use Blog2Social to schedule my posts to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Medium and Tumblr.
  • I use Feedly to read blogs and articles.  Feedly helps me digest a lot of information to share on my networks. I will spend 10 – 15 minutes several times a week selecting items that I want to share.
  • I set aside 45 – 60 mins a week to batch schedule my recycled and repurposed social media posts.  I head to Blog2Social to determine which posts I will repurpose and share and to what networks.

 

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Develop a Social Media Process That Works for You

 

Creating a specific process like this means you reduce the amount of time you go searching for content to share or procrastinating about what to share. Once I have the week scheduled, I see this as my base content and will still often share content, add conversation and respond to questions/comments on my networks when I check in once a day.

Social media doesn’t have to decrease your productivity. Create a social media strategy and batching process so you are in control of how you spend your time on social media and see your productivity flourish!

Do you find you are spending too much time on social media?

 

Social Media Analytics Give Your Business Creative Benefits *

Social Media Analytics Give Your Business Creative Benefits *

by | Nov 24, 2020 | Social Media

Social Media Analytics Help Track Your Marketing Results

 

It’s important to track your results to determine how successful your social media efforts are.  The basic social media analytics software is good for tracking data such as likes, clicks, shares and other types of engagement.

If you want to plan more effective social media campaigns it’s important to understand your audience.  You need to find creative ways to benefit from analytics by using a comprehensive social media monitoring or listening strategy.  Let’s examine a few of the ways this can help your business track your success.

 

Social Media Analytics Help Engage Your Audience

 

It’s difficult to keep up with the social media activity that impacts your brand.  You should at the very least monitor your own accounts and respond to direct questions and comments.  It is likely that there are many conversations going on all over social media that affect your industry and your business.  How can you possibly keep current with all the topics of interest being discussed on the many available platform options.

 

Social Media Analytics Help You Identify and Engage Your Audience

People may be asking pertinent questions on Quora, tweeting about a news story or posting relevant photos on Facebook or Instagram.  If you were able to listen to social media on a large scale it would allow you to insert yourself into some of these discussions, gaining new followers and customers.

Engaging allows you to answer questions and make helpful suggestions.  It’s best to do this in a low-key manner rather than overtly selling your own product.

 

Social Media Analytics Identify and Engage Your Top Customers

 

You also need to identify influencers and loyal customers who support your business.  Social media analytics are key to tracking your most valuable customers and brand advocates.

Monitoring social media, informs you when people are touting your products.  This helps you build stronger relationships with your best customers.  You can sometimes include them in your marketing efforts.

An influencer who’s fond of your brand might review your latest product on his or her YouTube channel or Instagram account.

 

Social Media Analytics Help Monitor Your Competition

 

Your business needs to use social media analytics to help track your competition.  You can learn a lot from your competitors about dealing effectively with your target audience.

Social media analytics can tell you which strategies are working for you, and which aren’t.  you can see who is responding to your posts and what they are saying.  Your company might learn valuable tips by “spying” on a larger and established business in the same niche or industry.

The easiest way to track your competitors on social media is to simply follow them.  Following people on Twitter, can help you gain more followers yourself.

 

Social Media Analytics Help You Monitor Your Competition

Facebook provides a useful tool that lets you track your competitors’ pages.  Using their Pages to Watch feature, you can access analytics from other Facebook Pages. You can use other social media analytics software and services to get detailed data about your competitors.  Some of these tools let you search your competitors’ posts and replies.

It’s also useful to keep track of which social media sites your competitors are using.  This isn’t hard to find out, as businesses openly advertise their links.  If you notice that a competitor is active on Instagram and you don’t yet have an account there, it’s important to understand how successful they are.  If they have lots of followers and engagement, that’s a clue to make that part of your marketing plan.

 

Social Media Analytics Can Improve Customer Relations

 

This is where social media monitoring overlaps your reputation management.  Review sites such as Google, Yelp, Angie’s List and others provide the opportunity to monitor your reviews and respond to them.

Many of your customers will also talk about you on social media.  If someone tweets a complaint about your business or makes a comment on another site, you need to know about it and have the ability to respond.

 

Social Media Analytics Can Help Improve Your Customer Relations

This gives you an opportunity to regain a customers trust.  If all you can do is apologize, you’re at least showing the customer and everyone else who sees your comments that you care.

With the growing number of social media sites, it’s important to monitor all mentions of your brand.  If you’re mentioned on a review site, a blog-type site such as Tumblr or one of the large social media platforms.  You need to know everything being said about your brand.

 

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Social Media Analytics Can Predict Your Future

 

Today, it’s critical to be on the leading edge of your field, niche or industry.  That’s why it’s necessary for you to monitor discussions about the latest trends and news.  This applies to every industry in our fast paced society.

If you have a restaurant, you need to keep up with the latest food trends.  If people are suddenly raving about a new dish, beverage or dessert.  You might want to add it to your menu.

If you’re in fashion, you surely want to be current on what people around the world are wearing.  It’s the same for any industry.  When people get interested in something new, they post their thoughts and images about it on social media.  Monitoring this activity gives you an edge over your competitors.

As social media expands, it increasingly becomes important to use analytics tools to track your campaigns. In addition to tracking your basic analytics, it’s also great to go beyond this and monitor your competitors and their discussions that are relevant to your business.

 

Design Your Social Media Images to Create Brand Recognition *

Design Your Social Media Images to Create Brand Recognition *

by | Nov 22, 2020 | Social Media

Design Your Social Media Images to Promote Your Brand

 

Are you posting images across your social media pages?

Do you use these images to extend your brand recognition?

Using images on your social media pages is a sure way to engage your audience.  In addition, the way you use logos, fonts and colors in your social media images is an important part of gaining brand attention.

In this article you’ll discover how to make your social profiles and visual content reinforce your brand and catch your audience’s eye.

 

Choose Your Fonts and Colors for Effect

 

The primary visual elements that create people’s perception of your brand on social media are fonts, colors and images.  Your different goals may require different choices for each element.

The fonts available range from bold and loud to thin and delicate.  Where does your company persona fit on this spectrum?

For the majority of your marketing, you should limit yourself to two or three main fonts.  It’s acceptable to occasionally break that rule on social media.

Using creative fonts in your Facebook updates, Havaianas match their print theme and reflect the company’s fun and playful identity.

 

When branding across social media, consistency is key.

Choosing images and colors for your visual updates, you need to consider what feelings you want to evoke.

For example, if you are promoting a contest?  Use bright, cheerful colors.  Are you posting a staff update?  You should use a well-lit portrait and include it in a design with your brand colors.

 

Benefit Cosmetics uses feminine imagery and a consistent color palette.

Beauty brand Benefit Cosmetics does a good job of reflecting their feminine identity on Instagram.  Note the pink and white palette, simple imagery and use of a playful script font.

 

Design Reusable Templates

 

Each social media network has its own optimized image dimensions.  It can be time-consuming to create individual images for each network every time you want to share visual content.  Even creating a single image to share across all platforms can take more time than you’d like.

 

Create image templates that match each social network’s requirements.

The easiest way to reduce your design time and maintain consistency is to create templates for the types of posts you share regularly.  Don’t restrict yourself to one or two types of templates—make several to accommodate a variety of content.  Here are some additional template ideas for weekly posts:

  • Product Tips
  • Event Posts
  • Company Milestones

In the example below San Pellegrino posted a sequence of 10 tips on Instagram.  Their simple template made the tips easy to create and instantly recognizable to their audience.

 

Make your life easier by creating templates for different design types.

Create Complementary Profiles and Covers

 

Consistency is a key part of recognition and success.  Use your company’s logo or a variation of its design for each of your social profile pictures to build your online brand recognition.

Even if you tweak your logo, your audience should still be able to recognize you immediately.

 

Havaianas experiments with fonts in their Facebook designs.

Havaianas experiments with fonts in their Facebook designs.

In the example above you can see how lululemon athletica has adapted a version of its standard red logo to match its cover image on Facebook and Twitter.

The harmony between your profile and cover photos is anchored by graphic elements such as color, text and imagery.  Create a cover photo that complements your profile image.  You can use existing marketing materials or create something new.

If you create a custom cover image and want to ensure that the colors match your profile picture, use a color picker tool to extract the color hex code.  A hex code is a six-digit code that represents an exact color universally recognized by HTML and CSS.

When you know your hex codes, you can use the same colors in your designs over and over again.  This removes any variation or guesswork and provides for a consistent look.

 

Use Watermarks Consistently

 

If you include a logo or other icon with your images, you should create guidelines addressing your logo size and placement.  Doing this avoids appearing sloppy by having inconsistent logo sizes or random logo placement.

In the picture below you can see that the H&M logo is the same size and in the same place on each photo.  Being consistent plays a part in their overall brand recognition.

 

Logo placed consistently on H&M Facebook catalog.

A quick tip:  Don’t place your logo flush with the edge of your photo.  Instead, leave some space around it to make it neater and look more intentional.

 

Let Your Image Do the Talking

 

Up to 90% of the information transmitted to your brain is visual, so it’s no surprise that people respond well to great visual design.

Using pictures as the focus of your updatesgives you a great opportunity to be creative.  When you design your visual content, rely less on your words.  Let your colors, images and backgrounds convey your message.

In the picture below notice how the compelling background image and Twitter icon grab your attention first and work well with the more subtle text call to action.

 

Use icons to replace text in your designs

When you have the perfect picture, sometimes you don’t need to use text overlays at all.   Use clever images to capture your audience’s attention.   In the image below, Ben and Jerry’s used fewer than 10 words in their updates.  They let their product pictures do their talking.

 

Capture your audience’s attention using clever images

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Over to You

 

With over two billion people active on social media every day, improving how you use visual assets is a powerful way to drive more people to your business.

Use consistent fonts and colors and your existing branding to extend your recognition beyond the usual places.  No matter where you post, make sure your audience can recognize you immediately.

Make the most of your visual assets and enjoy creating beautiful designs.  The social media race is on, and responsive and engaging design is your express ticket to the finish line.

What do you think?  Have you used any of these tips already?  Do you have additional ideas to share?   Leave your comments and questions below.

 

How to Improve Your Marketing Using Social Media Analytics *

How to Improve Your Marketing Using Social Media Analytics *

by | Nov 4, 2020 | Social Media

5 Social Analytics Tips to Improve Your Campaigns

 

If you want to make your social media marketing as profitable as possible, you need to keep close track of essential metrics. Social analytics is often the difference between a successful campaign and wasting your time and money on ineffective marketing.

There are a variety of tools and services that can help you with analytics. However, what matters most is having a strategy and knowing which numbers to watch. Here are 5 social analytics tips to help you get more out of your campaigns.

Identify Your Social Analytics Objectives

 

Before you can identify the optimum metrics to track and the best social analytics tools for your needs, it’s important to identify your goals.  Not all businesses or campaigns are alike.  For example, if your primary objective is to increase brand awareness, it makes sense to pay close attention to data such as views, likes, shares and follows.

 

Before you can identify the optimum metrics to track and the best social analytics tools for your needs it’s important to identify your goals

If you’re trying to drive more quality traffic to your website, click-throughs are your biggest concern.  Your goals may not be the same for each campaign or for each social media site. Goals for your business can also change over time.

 

Which Social Media Channels Are Best For You

 

There are more and more choices when it comes to social media. It’s safe to say that every business should use Facebook as this site covers all demographics that are active online. Twitter is second in this regard even though some other sites actually have more users.

Beyond these two, however, you should identify the platforms that your audience uses most. Pinterest can be powerful for promoting physical products. Snapchat is a good choice if you’re focusing on Millennials and Gen Z. LinkedIn is a must if you do any type of B2B marketing.

 

You can use social analytics tools to help you find out which sites are sending you the most traffic and which are best for leads and sales

To really understand which social media channels are most valuable to you, conduct your own testing. You can use social analytics tools to help you find out which sites are sending you the most traffic and which are best for leads and sales.

Google Analytics reports are useful for measuring which platforms, as well as individual posts, are responsible for the most leads.

 

Track Your Click-Through Rates

 

Click-throughs are one of the most important metrics of all for any type of social media campaign. After all, your objective isn’t to get views or even likes but to get people to actually visit your website or wherever you’re sending them.

Your CTR is a good measure of how effective your social media content is. It’s just as important to track CTR for your social media posts as it is for paid ads and website content.

 

Click-throughs are one of the most important metrics of all for any type of social media campaign

Identify key factors in your social media posts and use A/B or split testing. There are a few ways to do this. You can measure your results on one site vs. another. If you find, for example, that you get a higher CTR on Facebook than other sites, you may decide to devote more of your resources to that platform.

You can also split test variables on a single platform. Certain topics might perform better than others. you can also test different types of content, such as text posts, images, infographics, and videos. There may be other variables as well, depending on which social site you’re using. On Twitter, for example, you can test hashtags.

 

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When is the Best Times to Post

 

While everyone says that you need to post to social media sites consistently, there’s far less consensus about just how often to post. Furthermore, there are endless debates about the best time of day and day of the week to post.

 

 

You need to post to social media sites consistently, there’s far less consensus about just how often to post

As with most arguments about social analytics, the best solution is to do your own testing. The same answer is not going to be the same for every business.  Free tools such as Facebook Insights can help you test your results for posting at different times.

It’s helpful to know when your followers are most likely to be online and engaged. If your audience lives in multiple time zones you also have to factor this into your calculations. This information helps with other types of marketing as well, such as sending emails and posting to your blog.

Knowing how often to post is a little trickier to test for. Many studies on this topic suggest that it’s fine to post often as long as you have fresh and relevant content. It also varies from one platform to the next. It makes sense to post the same content two or three times per day on Twitter because the timeline moves so fast. Doing this on Facebook, however, will more likely annoy your followers.

 

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