20 Social Media Marketing Hacks to Get More Done In Less Time

If you’re an entrepreneur, then you’re probably looking for ways to cut corners and maximize your time.  However, you also need to market your business effectively in order to drive bottom line results.  The great news is that there are lots of things you can do and tools you can use in order to get the best results for your time and budget.

Below are 20 social media and online marketing hacks you can implement to improve your marketing performance without spending 40 hours a week behind your computer.

1.     Find the Best Time to Tweet: Gain insights and optimize your social strategy with Tweriod, which will track, report and share the times of day when you’re most likely to get the most traction from your Tweets.

2.     Social Embeds: When creating blog posts, use the Facebook and Twitter embed functions on your posts. These are not only quick call to actions, but also, a way for your social media profiles to improve your site rankings.

3.     Social Media Dashboard:  Manage your social media through the use of dashboard applications. A dashboard will allow you to sync multiple account types and post to multiple networks at once, reducing the need to manually log into each account all the time.  One of my favorites is HootSuite.

4.     Get the Facts: There have always been a lot of myths circulating in social about what works and what doesn't. Who has time to get the real scoop? Check out Social Media Labs powered by AgoraPulse. They do the experiments so you don't have to!

5.     Popular Instagram Hashtags: Stay up to date with the top Instagram hashtags. Web.stagram.com tracks and filters on the most popular hashtags for Instagram. Increase engagement with the content that is trending.

6.     Share Other People's Content: You don't have to do everything by yourself. Use a site like Feedly to curate content from other sources and share it in your social feeds in addition to your own content.

7.     Boost Audience Engagement with SlideShare: Create content with SlideShare and auto post to LinkedIn and Twitter. You can easily repurpose your current, evergreen content into a Slideshare to reach an even wider audience without spending a lot more time creating new content.

8.     Instant Graphic Design with Canva:  Tired of waiting for a graphic designer?  With Canva, anyone can quickly create high-end marketing graphics, social media graphics and presentations. 

9.     Easy Contests: Ever wanted to promote a contest or sweepstakes? Enhance your marketing strategy with Woobox.  Boost your promotions with coupons, quizzes and more.

10.   Write Content That Gets Noticed: Seeking to write content that goes viral? Use BuzzSumo to analyze trending content and learn what the best content that will convert for your readers.

11.    Live Video Visibility:  Live Video is the future for all businesses.  Use Facebook Live to share your live video content. It's fast, easy and free.

12.    Presentations in a Flash:  Do you need a great presentation for your proposals or to use on Slideshare? Slideteam.net has thousands of great presentations to choose from.  Grab one, add your content and you’re done! Professional results with minimal time!

13.    Use CTAs:  Writing content that's strictly valuable to the reader is wonderful but every once in a while you need to ask them to do something. Don't forget to add calls to action on each page of your website. Ask them to contact you, connect with you on social, download a valuable report, subscribe to your blog, request a call with you... You'd be surprised at the people who never ask their readers to take action and then wonder why no one is taking action.

14.    Landing Pages for Facebook:  Want to promote your contest, event, product or something else on Facebook?  Create a great landing page with 22Social that hooks up to your own mailing provider so you can collect leads directly from your Facebook page.

15. Thank EVERYONE!  In addition to providing some pretty great analytics, Commun.it lets you set up campaigns to ensure your followers and influencers get a thank you from you each week. WARNING: Don’t let this take the place of genuine one-on-one thank you’s. Use it to save yourself a little time on busy weeks but don’t neglect the real engagement!

16. Consumer Insights:  Use Consumer Barometer to analyze and gather research statistics and data that you can use when creating content.  For example, know the percentage of people who use smartphones in the United States.   

17. Do More With Less: A tool like IFTTT will allow you to create recipes for life so you can get more done with a single click.  Save your Instagram photos to Dropbox automatically, post all Facebook posts over to Google+ or just get a map to where you parked your car.  The possibilities are endless!

18. Repurpose Content: You work hard to create those blog posts and videos. Why not get more mileage out of them? Record a video and create a blog post from it. Create tweets and posts from that. Use the audio from the video to create a Podcast. Create a graphic from a key idea within your main content. Repurposing your content in this way not only saves you a ton of time, it also allows you to reach more of your ideal audience across a wide variety of platforms.

19. Search Operators:  Using the Google search operators you can narrow down your search results for better and faster Googling.  You can filter your search to a particular set of terms or even content within a particular site. 

20. Connect More Personally: I recently found a new tool that I’ve been having lots of fun with. Some say it’s a bit creepy but I’ve found it to be highly accurate when it comes to communicating with others.  CrystalKnows is a web tool and GMail plug-in that analyzes public information (LinkedIn, media quotes, blogs, etc.) written by or about an individual and helps you better communicate with them by using algorithms to determine personality, communication style and more. It helps you determine whether to keep conversations short or longer and more detailed. It gives you insights into their general personality and makes recommendations for the best ways to get them to respond. 

The information and tools I’ve shared above can be a tremendous help when it comes to cutting corners and getting better results.  Don’t forget, however, that marketing is all about relationships. Don’t over automate. Don’t stop listening to the very real people who are online today and in need of your services. Don’t use social media as a broadcasting tool to blast your advertisements out without considering the value you bring to your audience.

Are you struggling to implement an effective marketing plan for your business? Would you like some help? The best time saver of all can be a virtual assistant! Contact us and schedule an appointment. We’re ready to help!