Before setting your alarm, just before bed at night, consider setting it half an hour earlier. That may mean going to bed a little earlier but it’ll be worth it. Entrepreneurs can be working 24/7 and so sleep is very important, whenever they can manage it. Being organised should also be a top priority. An evening task may involve setting important tasks for the day after. Social media may not even feature on the list and very often, entrepreneurs will either not post anything because they are too busy or wing it and tweet when they have a spare 5 minutes. Some may even not have anything to say or don’t consider it worthy of sharing.
A common feeling is the relentlessness of social media, knowing it’s on all the time and it’s where customers expect you to be, engaging with them. Everyone’s morning routines can be different. Perhaps you have time to watch the news, while you cook a fry up or you may be rushing to get the kids ready for school or immediately do exercise to boost your energy for the day ahead.
However, a great way of starting your day is to schedule your social media. Using tools like Hootsuite, you can schedule posts throughout the day. With a little research, you may find that your target audience tend to be mostly online between 7 – 8pm. Therefore schedule a tweet to draw them in at that time. It also helps if you have multiple accounts, including other networks like LinkedIn or Google+. A good start would be to try 3 tweets a day. One that shares an interesting link/story, one that picks out something unique about your product/service and one that engages in conversation with someone or retweets.
For Facebook business pages, you can also schedule posts by clicking on the clock, under the posting box. This allows you to set a time and you could even schedule your whole week, especially if you only plan on one Facebook post a day.
As a social media professional, I manage many accounts so spend a lot of time scheduling and researching. An average business should only need from 5 to 30 mins per day. For further help and information regarding a social media action plan, contact me at jon@socialant.co.uk.
Jon Exton
Twitter: @thesocialant
