Too busy to create blogs?
Not enough time for social media?
Too much to do to market your business?
Are you seeing a pattern here?
Marketing is often the last thing you want to be doing… ok, maybe doing your accounts is is the last thing… but we all know it’s so important for the vitality of our businesses.
In order to get more clients, we need to tell our story and market our business.
How do you make sure you have maximum impact for minimum time?
How do you make sure you get seen, without spending all day on your marketing?
After all, you’re here to do what you’re good at, not be a full-time marketer.
There are a few tactics and strategies that us marketers use that makes marketing easier and faster and I want to share those tips with you today.
1. Create a strategy and plan
Before undertaking any business activity it’s important to know which direction you are going in. A strategy and a plan will help you formulate that direction and assist you in staying on track.
Start with the end goal in mind and work back by defining the steps you need to take to reach that destination.
Your strategy should discuss the why, the big leaps and the bigger vision, whereas your plan should describe the smaller steps of how you will get to your goal.
2. Automation tools
Automation tools may seem a bit impersonal but they can save you a great deal of time. Instead of jumping on Facebook ad-hoc you create a schedule of what you’d like to post and you use an automation tool to slowly ‘drip’ the content to your audience.
Some people have said that for example in Facebook, the reach drops when you’re posting with a scheduling tool. In my opinion the method of how you send content doesn’t matter as much as the content itself. If you deliver high quality, engaging content through a scheduling tool it will still reach your audience and deliver value to them.
The way I see it is that you need to look at the greater value. Does your time mean more to you or does your reach mean more to you? Which has the greater return on investment?
3. Set a timer
We all know how it works. We say we’re just going to hop onto Facebook for 5 minutes but chances are that you’re still there 30 minutes later.
The only way to avoid this is by setting a time combined with sheer will-power.
Determine how long it takes you to upload a post and engage with your audience and then set yourself a predetermined amount of time for you to go on social media.
You can do the same for your blogging, social media groups, and any other marketing activities. Just be consistent and actually commit to doing it.
4. Use curated content in addition to your own
Instead of trying to create tons of content by yourself, you can also make use of curated content. Which means that you’re sharing other people’s content that your own audience may like or find valuable.
I suggest mixing this with your own content creation as you do still need to produce your own content that serves your audience. Creating your own content helps you to be seen as the expert in your field, it gives potential clients a taster of what you can do and it’s often good for search engine rankings too.
Curated content is usually a great option and it shares ‘the love’ which often gets returned as others start spreading the word for you.
5. Re-purpose content
Once you have created some content, whether it be a Facebook post or a blog article, make sure you save it in a dedicated content library (which could be a simple Excel spreadsheet) so that you can re-use your content.
For example you publish a blog post today and send it out via your social media channels, you really should re-use this content and send it out to your social media channels again next month, and in 3 months, and in 5 months.
Re-use your content and keep promoting it to your tribe. Just because you didn’t write it recently doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable.
Your audience may not have seen it, or they may need the reminder.
Hopefully you’ll be able to save some time with these tips, they surely do help me!
Disclosure: Some articles on this site may contain affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, Bianca McKenzie may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
