Can’t Keep Up? 23 Ways to Simplify Your Social Media Routine
Spending too much time on Facebook every day to post updates? Or do you try to have conversations on Twitter, only it takes far too long to get everything else done?
Don’t even get me started on Linkedin Groups, talk about getting lost in social media, once I get started going through groups, it’s an hours long process, just too much fun and information.
Since there are so many places to be active in social media, saving time on one might give you enough time to entertain followers on another.
How You Can Simplify Your Social Media Routine
So, let’s list out some of the ways I save time in social media, I hope it helps.
Automate some submissions– Use Twitterfeed to automate submissions from certain feeds, your own rss feed, your friend’s, or your favorite industry users.
You can automate to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin Company Pages (with certain tools) or Linkedin profiles.
Even easier than Twitterfeed, is Tweetadder for Rss feeds. You can add the feed, the username of the Twitter author, and a hashtag they usually use.
Write several updates at once– as a writer, once you get into the zone of writing content, it’s best to just keep going.
Write several updates at once to use throughout the month. The first few days might be weird but once you hit your stride, the updates should sound great.
Schedule updates ahead of time, then manage– take the updates you just wrote and schedule them in Hootsuite on the publisher page.
Use Hootsuite– It’s easy to forget Hootsuite can be used for more than scheduling updates. But Hootsuite has access to all of the big social media sites, and each of them can be set up to save you time. For instance:
- Make lists of people in Twitter when you want to see all of their posts, then set up a stream in Hootsuite- easy access to relationship building with them.
- Have a search stream set up for tweets including certain keywords or hashtags so that you can monitor conversations quickly, and participate in them easily.
- Use the geographic location search to find people talking in your area, if you run a local business.
- Manage multiple client fanpages’ comments, each with their own stream.
- Skip visiting Linkedin by viewing your home feed and group feeds from streams.
Schedule social media time and stick to it– Pick a time twice a day to check social media. I suggest late morning and early night for instance; 11am and 8pm EST. To make it part of your routine, put an alarm on your phone or computer.
Edit & Make Graphics In Batches– If you already have the program open to edit an image or add text, take several from the content you’ve planned out and fix them up for future use. It is so much easier to grab the image and post it, than open the program and play with layers.
Use the Same Image with Different Text– You can take a single background and add text. You might have an image template for each category on your site, then you can edit the images and text from the template without having to create a new one each time.
Use Tagboard to comment– Skip the bookmarking of fanpages, and use Tagboard to find fanpages talking about your industry. As long as you are signed in as the fanpage you can quickly leave 5-10 comments to get exposure for the client.
Curate content from Feedly or Alltop– Curation makes it simple to share content your followers will like, without taking you a long time to do so. Feedly and Alltop are great sources for hot content on just about every topic.
With Feedly you’ll need to subscribe to blogs you like for your industry, and with Alltop you can just search for your topic from the drop down menus.
Automate link submission with tools– Triberr and Bufferapp makes it even easier to share content because they both hold queues for you to share in time increments on your Twitter or other social media accounts.
Follow Circles & Use SocialBro– Mass following on Twitter and Google+ can make life a lot easier. When I first started using both of these websites I would follow people one at a time, even for clients.
I knew that at the most I would get a 30% return rate from those people I was following, but it was worth it, or so I thought at the time.
Now I use Socialbro to make it easy to follow hundreds of people at a time on Twitter, and instead of following up to 40 people a day on Google+ I find circles that are relevant to me and follow those. When I can, I add myself as well.
Use Your Phone To Follow Back & Update– The Twitter app on iPhone and iPad makes it simple to click on each person who has followed you, and follow them back.
There are tools that can do this automatically, but I don’t want to follow every one who follows me, so I use this approach instead. On the Twitter website you have to click each person and follow, but on the iOS app, you get a simple list and can run through it relatively quickly.
Hyper Alerts for Facebook Notifications– If you leave email open all day, you don’t have to leave Facebook open because you can get immediate alerts for notifications on your fanpages.
This is easier than leaving Facebook on, because you simply get the comment left on the fanpage, and you don’t have to login and get distracted (yup, that’s me). Visit Hyper Alerts to sign up for free,here.
Weekly emails from Linkedin Groups or Hootsuite– Linkedin doesn’t make it easy to login and see all of the updates and discussions from your groups, but they do give you the option to get weekly updates.
You can go here to change your subscriptions from daily (annoying) to weekly or not at all.
If you opt for not at all, you can set up streams in a tab on Hootsuite, which is very useful because you can over see up to 4 of your groups at once. It is monotonous to add each stream, but probably easier than dealing with up to 50 emails a week.
Using a CRM– A CRM is a customer relationship manager and in social media, it is irreplacable. Once you start to get hundreds to thousands of connections on social media, it’s not easy to stay on top of them all.
Who do you want to connect with on a regular basis, who do you want to be able to find quickly?
There are a handful of CRM’s I have tried, including Nimble, Cloze, Nutshell and a few others. Nimble has the most attractive interface and flexibility, with the most features. Cloze is very simple to use, but not as many features, and Nutshell really connects with Linkedin best.
Automate resharing of old content– There are a couple of options for this, but I have to say it is one of the best ways to increase traffic easily. You’ve written so many blog posts, it’s time to squeeze more out of them. There are plugins you can use for WordPress to automate this, or you can use TweetAdder.
I recommend Tweetadder because you can write out several updates for each blog post and have the program randomize though these messages endlessly.
By doing this you’ll see which of your tweets are working best for future titles. When using plugins you don’t get the option to customize each of the updates, and add in others as well.
Use browser extensions, plugins and addons– There are hundreds of great plugins and browser extensions out there, but I don’t know about all of them. One I do use is Chime, for Chrome, and it notifies me everytime someone mentions me on Twitter, or I get a comment on my Facebook profile.
Another one I use is DoShare, for Chrome, because it is the only way to schedule updates to personal Google+ accounts. These simply save me time from having to visit each platform all of the time.
Last but not least, the PinIt bookmarklet is something I use quite frequently as I like to share anything social media related on my Pinterest board.
Optimize down time– This last one is something we hardly think about, but spend a lot of time doing anyway.Doctors appointments, waiting for the kids in the bathroom, some of us- going to the bathroom, carpooling (assuming you aren’t driving), or waiting for the bus.
If you don’t have anything to do besides send a text message, check social media and send an update, answer a comment or mention, or retweet something for your followers.
This time adds up. I’m not suggesting every second should be social media related, just that when you have a few seconds and it wouldn’t otherwise be useful, tweet for business.
What Saves You Time in Social Media?
I’m sure you have your own time savers, tools (my favorite) and strategies for getting the most out of your time. Can you share below? Even more if you have tips for the platforms I didn’t mention, like Pinterest, Instagram or Youtube, that would be great. Let’s discuss below!
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Hey Mary,
some great tips! I like the one about following circles on Google + and using socialbro, haven’t used it for a while!
Ian
Simplicity when it comes to social media is what I need Mary. I am bookmarking this. I’m not sure I’ve every really understood though what constitutes a CRM. It seems that everyone’s definition is a little different. What I have been doing is to use Outlook for everything, but they’re slow to integrate social in there.
Hey Mary,
“23” and “simplify” in the same sentence seems to cancel one another out! 🙂 But seriously, good list of tools. I use TwitterFeed, Hootsuite, Triberr (thanks!) and Buffer but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of Buffer. I’be been meaning to add you to my Twitterfeed, will get to that soon.
Hi Vernessa,
Yeah, maybe I went a little too far with tips :). If you need help with Bufferapp let me know, it’s really simple to use and you’ll get the hang of it in NO time. Thanks for adding me when you have time, that’s so sweet!
Mary
Indeed, a great list with functional suggestions. So many of these types of posts feature tips like “schedule time daily” and “set priorities” ignoring the fact that once you expose yourself to the stream, you tend to get lost in it. LOL! Guilty!
One of the tools I’ve used for many years is SocialOomph, formerly called Tweetlater. It hooks into multiple social networks and allows you to post tweets, facebook updates, etc., on your schedule. You can even upload batch posts and submit them on your schedule.
I can’t live without it when I’m wrapped up in a project and can’t get those few minutes to remind the social web that I exist. It’s fabulous for reminding folks of your brilliant past published posts, silly bits and pieces, news, favorite links and finds…love it. It’s not fancy, though it recently got a facelift, but it does the job.
Another tip I would offer is to schedule your site posts. Don’t think I saw that in your list. With WordPress, I can sit down and write 20 posts and schedule them for 20 days, once a week for twenty weeks, or whatever I need, and walk away, checking for comments and any slight trauma. Another way of getting my life back.
For a social media and web publishing expert hooked to the social web like a mainstreaming addict, tools like this and those on your list that help us get a real life…can’t live without them.
Thanks for sharing these. You’ve revitalized my personal life with some of these – off to check them out! Thanks!
Hi Lorelle,
I’ve played with SocialOomph some but didn’t love the interface. I do need to check it out again, that’s something about these social media tools, they are always changing. I’m so glad these tips have helped you get back some personal time, I know I enjoy having time to get away.
I don’t know how you write all of those posts at once for WordPress, lol, that would drive me bonkers. I have a hard time writing more than 2 or 3 at a time.
I’m so glad you visited and I’d love to hear more about how you save time, send me an email or hit me up on skype Marygreencny or [email protected]
Mary,
This is the second time today that I’ve read about SocialOomph! I haven’t checked it out yet but I will now. One of my favorite tools for automatically sharing RSS feeds is Dlvr.it. I used the free version for years before finally upgrading to a pro plan.
For a while, I was running into issues where the images for my blog posts weren’t showing on LinkedIn and Facebook. I researched the LinkedIn issue for quite a while and while I could find plenty of people who encountered the issue, I couldn’t find a solution. Finally, I switched my feed from updating through Networked Blogs to Dlvr.it and (so far) that worked!
Great tips! Thanks.
Evernote is another great tool I use to simplify my social media. Anytime I come across an idea or great piece of content I make a note of it. This spreads out the work of finding content and means that I don’t have to scramble every morning to look for it.
That’s a great idea, Noah. I like to use Feedly and email for the ultra great sources, but Alltop is pretty great too.