I don’t have time for social media
I don’t have the budget to take courses for social media
I don’t have the budget to hire someone for social media
These are some of the things I hear all the time as a social media consultant, and being a business owner myself, I completely understand
When you’re running a business, you’re already doing SO many things every single day, and social media is just one small part of running your business.
Between taking care of customers, answering emails, sending invoices and, for some, managing employees–not to mention the actual day-to-day work of running your business. It’s a lot. So it’s easy for social media to get pushed to the bottom of the endless to-do list.
So the next option might be to hire someone. But for many people, hiring a social media manager just isn’t in the budget. And paid advertising feels like a whole thing to try to understand. It’s just not really in the cards.
Then you look at what big businesses are doing and feel like you need to have a budget for polished content to compete.
The reality is, you don’t NEED all of those things
If you have limited time and a limited budget, I feel you. The answer isn’t to do more.
No way. It’s actually to make your social media simpler and focus on things you can actually maintain.
You don’t have to be all the places
Social media becomes overwhelming when you’re trying to maintain too many platforms at once.
Your business does NOT need to be on every single platform, including every new platform that comes along.
Think about where the people you actually want to reach are spending their time and focus your energy there. Having fewer platforms means fewer accounts to update, fewer messages to check and less content to create.
It’s better to show up on one or two platforms consistently than have five accounts that haven’t been updated in months.
Work with what you already have
Posting something online doesn’t always mean starting from scratch every single time; take a look at what you already have. There are probably photos sitting in your camera or old posts that could be updated.
If you shared a great tip or some new photos six months ago, there’s nothing wrong with sharing again. Not everyone following you sees the posts the first time and even the people who did probably don’t remember.
That saves a lot of time compared to sitting down and trying to figure out what to create from scratch every time you need to post! Just give yourself permission to take the easy route sometimes if it means getting the post online.
Your phone is all you need
There is absolutely a place for professional photography and design and video production, but that doesn’t mean every piece of social media content needs to be curated and produced to perfection.
For most small businesses, your phone is enough! Take a picture of something you’re working on, record a short video explaining a product or service. The important thing is showing your audience that there are things happening behind the scenes.
People don’t necessarily follow a small business because they want perfectly polished advertising every day. They just want to see behind the curtain to the REAL people who are actually doing the work.
Don’t spend 45 minutes creating a 10-minute post
The biggest time waster I see when I’m working with students and clients is overthinking things.
As I mentioned before, not every single piece of content needs to be perfectly polished and curated!
Yet I see business owners all the time find a photo that they want to post. Then rethink it over and over, looking at slightly different variations of the same product photo, and then they write the caption and rewrite it and rewrite it again and then spend another 10 minutes deciding whether they should post it at all; before you know it, that 10-minute post has taken an hour!
Sometimes, it’s good enough to answer a question, share an update or remind people that your business is active.
Prioritize repurposing
If you’re short on time, one of the best habits you can develop is repurposing your content. One piece of content can go a long way!
Recently I had a student in one of my workshops mention that they had answered a question for a customer in their DMs. Instead of just answering it and moving on, they could have turned it into a post and then later record a quick video answering the same question. Then it could become a story on social media, a part of a newsletter or even a topic for a blog post.
If you’re going to spend time creating a piece of content, make sure that it’s working hard for you.
Social media is still social
We spend SO much time overthinking creating content, sometimes we forget posting is only part of social media. You can stay visible by interacting with people, too.
Reply to comments on your post, answer your messages, leave thoughtful comments on other businesses' posts, support organizations in your community. Make sure to comment to thank people when someone tags you or mentions you.
None of this requires an advertising budget, but it’s incredibly valuable in building relationships with the people you wanna reach.
Find a schedule you can actually maintain
Consistency is important, but that doesn’t mean you have to post every single day.
If you have time to create a post twice a week and you know that you can maintain that over a long period of time, just start there. If three times a week works, great! There is no point in planning to post more often than you can maintain over a long period of time. No matter what the guru’s say about the optimal posting schedule.
You can worry about that when you have the budget to hire someone and take it off your plate. For now, your social media should fit your business, not become another thing to be stressed out about.
I talk about these kind of things all the time online, so if you’re interested in social media you can do in minutes a day, make sure to follow along on Instagram or Facebook, and sign up for the Social Media Minute Newsletter to get social media tips directly in your inbox.