Have you been thinking about getting your business more active on social media, but are afraid you don’t have time to spend hours and hours a week creating content and watching your feeds?

Good news: You don’t have to.

Depending on your goals, you can be highly effective on social media by spending less than an hour a day working on it. One disclaimer: If you want to generate hundreds of leads and clicks during a given month, a casual approach will not work. But a steady, moderate effort can do wonders for establishing your credibility and staying top-of-mind.

At BumbleBee, we get the majority of our new business from personal referrals. But we also reach out to new clients on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Even though our efforts are modest (we post 3-5 times per month) we hear from new clients all the time because they remember seeing our posts and useful comments in their feeds.

Here are a few tips we’ve learned along the way to get more out of social media.

Create a social media roadmap. A monthly overview of your content, images or video elements and post copy is essential to keeping you on track. Plan on four posts per month—that’s just one a week.

Create content. To keep it simple we mix it up between original content and shared content. Here are some suggestions:

• Short and sweet blog posts (like this one).

• Videos of you and your team at business events. These don’t have to be fancy high production videos—your iPhone works just as well. Even a one-second-every-day video of your team in action can get a great response.

• Video interviews of your customers. Again, there’s no need for a professional set up. A one-minute iPhone video of your customer endorsing you is inexpensive and powerful.

• Share content created by others. Make that daily hour spent on social media work for you. Every time you see an article or post that might interest your audience put it on your roadmap to share.

• Join LinkedIn Groups. This is a big one for building credibility. If your company delivers IT services, there are literally dozens of groups out there you should belong to. Participate in group discussions, but don’t get all sales pitchy with them—that is a surefire way to kill the good vibes. Be informative and helpful and people will remember you for the right reasons.

Can you spend a lot more time than an hour a day and get even better results? Absolutely! We handle social media nurturing campaigns all the time for our clients, and their goals are much more targeted and ambitious. But if you start with basics that are maintainable for the long haul, it will go a long way to keeping you in front of your audience.

Want help developing a social media roadmap, creative content or a social nurturing demand generation campaign?

Give me a call and we can help.
ellen@bumblebeemarketing.net