- April 1, 2018
- Posted by: Con P. Sweeney
- Category: Social Media
Meeting with prospective clients, more often than not, the push back I receive is not about the value to be gained from social media as much as it is where do they find the time to do it?
Larger organizations have the staff and budget to throw bodies at new social media initiatives and not have to worry about it.
The small and mid-sized organizations that I work with don’t have that luxury.
They have to make do with what they have.
Let’s discuss this!
The classic management consulting paradigm works very well here.
The triad of this paradigm is comprised of:
- People
- Process
- Technology
I’ll discuss each of these in turn.
The first is People.
This is all about who’s going to do it for you.
What’s important here is that if you’re all you’ve got then you have to keep your initial social media efforts simple.
Don’t try to boil the ocean!
If you have existing staff or family members who can help you then so much the better.
You can outsource the work.
But, be careful here, this can get expensive.
Many clients ask me to do work that I’m just too expensive for.
One solution is to carve out the repetitive routine work for virtual administrators or part-time staff and let consultants like me handle the more involved work.
The blended hourly rate from this can make outsourcing attractive.
Next is Process.
A disciplined approach, a schedule with time set aside regularly to perform social media tasks can make social media seem a lot less daunting.
Giving yourself small, achievable goals will also help. (Just don’t forget to track yourself against them!)
Use of tools like an editorial calendar to schedule out your content can make a big difference.
Last is Technology.
Automation can help make a seemingly insurmountable set of chores seem manageable.
A social media account manager like Hootsuite is a must if you want to keep all your social media channels aligned.
Other tools, like Feedly, a reader, and Evernote, for storing curated content, greatly simplify some of the more routine but still important tasks in your social media program.
Properly using this paradigm can save you time and money and make you more productive.
Just because you’re a small organization doesn’t mean that you can’t take advantage of social media.
Limited staff and budget don’t have to be excuses.
Sit back, think about it, and you too can use social media to expand your organization’s influence and improve its results.
That’s it for now!
Please check-out my 8 step approach for developing a social media program to get some more ideas on how to use social media.
Also, never forget to reach out to either ask questions or to ask for help from someone like myself!
In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog!
I look forward to any and all comments that you may have. I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.