Hello,
I'm Mervi Eskelinen!
An artist, nerd and sorcerer, dedicated to make world softer and better for everyone, and to get you to make more art. Make art, change the world!
More effortless and less time-consuming social media
Having at least the basic social media profiles and updating them more or less frequently is pretty much mandatory today, if you want to have your preferred career and not to be lost in the oblivion. It takes time, it takes effort and there are no shortcuts. Fortunately you can make it more effortless and spend less of your precious time with social media, if you go about it in a smart way.
You have your Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook profile, page and maybe a group, Periscope, Vine, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, your blog, Tumblr blog, Medium blog and much much more. Getting consumed by all of it is easy. But there are simple ways to make using social media for branding, business, marketing, or fun more effortless and less time-consuming.
1. Make a choice
You don't have to use all the social media platforms. Choose the ones that work best for you, where your audience hangs and drop the others, or turn them on automation. It may seem like you have to be everywhere, but really you can't. If you try to be everywhere all the time, you will only end up posting half baked posts that will harm your brand.
Choosing the right platforms depends on many things. As I mentioned above, one of those things is knowing where your preferred audience hangs. On top of that it also depends on the quality of your business and which platforms just feel the most effortless for you. If posting videos turns out to be really difficult for you, it won't be great for your audience or your business for forcing yourself to do that. There are however some platforms that are more important for certain types of people and businesses: For example, if you are in visual stuff, like photography, visual arts or in DIY or food, Pinterest and Instagram are musts. That's were your audience hangs and those platforms give you a way to show off your stuff.
I highly recommend testing which platforms work best for you and where your audience is. There's no one set answer to which social media services you should use, and it really depends on many, often very personal and personalised things. Also the best platforms may change in time. Today Instagram is a growing thing, tomorrow it could be something completely else. Keep testing, be flexible. It's okay to change your mind later, too.
Tip: Even if you aren't going to use all those different platforms, it is always a good idea to register an account for your (brand) name. Otherwise someone else will probably take it and they could harm your brand or at least make it difficult for you to start using the platform later on.
2. Use the right tools
Make social media more effortless by using the tools and apps that work best for you. You can use Facebook through your browser, or you can download one or all of the Facebook apps to your smartphone. There are many third party apps for using Twitter. My favourite for my iPhone is Tweetbot. There are many other social media managing, scheduling and automating services and apps (see the point number 3), which can make using social media much easier for you. You don't always have to use the official apps or the official sites of the social media platforms.
Some services and apps enable posting the same message to multiple social media services at once. Be careful with this. Those who follow you across different services may get bored seeing the same stuff everywhere. If you sometimes post the same message in different places, at least post other, platform specific messages here and there to keep things interesting.
This once again is one of those things you need to try yourself. A tool or service that helps me to post the content more effortlessly, may feel completely wrong for you. Test what works the best for you and go with it. I know some services are more popular than others, but it doesn't mean they are the best for you.
3. Schedule and automate
I mentioned automation in the first and the second points. Scheduling and automation are your friends when you want to keep posting, but don't have the resources to be everywhere at all times. For automation I recommend using IFTTT, with which you can create or find recipes for sharing your main blog posts (or preferably parts of them) on Tumblr or your Instagram photos as native Twitter photos. For scheduling you can use such services as Buffer and Hootsuite.
You can also mix scheduling and automation with manual updates. Of course scheduling also takes time, creating those scheduled posts. However, it means you don't have to be manually posting those things all the time. It's also good to check your automation/scheduling from time to time. Something may go broken at some point and that will again be harmful for your brand. Not to mention all the scheduling mistakes that can happen, such as a scheduled Tweet appearing disrespecting a tragedy. Remember that scheduled Tweet about Radiohead concert a few years back? Be vigilante and remember what you scheduled, to where and when.
Beware, automation doesn't suit everyone, so you will be likely to have less following on the automated platforms than those you manage manually. Scheduling can equally annoy your followers, so don't do that too much. Schedule only a limited amount of posts, such as once a day, and use automation carefully as well.
4. Theme it and create series
I cannot repeat this enough: Series are a great way to keep on posting stuff on social media, including your blog. I've been doing a series on Instagram, posting daily, artsy and reflective selfies with diary entry types of captions. It has been good, bad and ugly, but I really like how it keeps me posting stuff on Instagram. Before this series I would post photos pretty randomly and joining photo challenges kept my Instagram afloat only for a while. Having this sort of a reason, something I am committed to do, has kept me posting.
It's good to note that in order to get the most out of series, without letting them consume all your time and effort, it's important to make your series something that really works for you. I'm an introvert, who works from home, so I don't hang around other people daily basis. In case you go out and about more often, you could think about creating a series of taking photos of strangers and posting them on Instagram. With their permission, of course. You can create other kinds of series on other platforms, such as daily poems on Twitter.
Besides series, you can create themes you follow on your different social media profiles. You can create weekly, monthly or continuous themes. Following the theme you can then post certain contents. For instance, you could have theme your Twitter account next month around collecting and sharing DIY tutorials. These themes of course depend on your interests, what interest your preferred audience and on how you want to brand yourself. While using themes, don't forget to add some variation and don't get stuck within your theme.
Stretch your themed posts or series over a longer time and don't try to post everything during one day. You will only flood your followers, make them run away and it will defy the whole point of having themes and series.
5. Do your thing
That aforementioned selfie series I do on Instagram isn't my own original idea. I've seen other people doing similar series. However, I do it in my own way, with my own style and my own voice. I don't try to do my series in the way as someone else has done it. My selfies don't only feature me, but they also have my own style and personality in them. You can take inspiration and ideas from others, but add your own twist to the execution. Give it your personal touch.
Be authentic. Don't pretend. In case you aren't a glittery, sparkly, hyper, super extroverted person, try not to be that. It just comes out phoney and turns people off. Let your personality guide the tone of your content. Pretending to be something you aren't, posting content that doesn't really feel right coming from you, only leads to a failure.
This is another way of saying that often repeated mantra: Find your social media voice. That voice builds from your personality and helps to establish and fortify your brand.
6. Quit obsessing over statistics
While there are tons of ways and tools to measure and analyse your social media impact, try not to get obsessed with the statistics and analytics. Especially vanity metrics, such as amounts of followers or likes, are useless. Use your analytics to give you an idea of when and what to post, but be smart. What worked last week may not work this week. There are always spikes and lows in your stats, don't read too much into them.
Statistics and analytics can help you to get make more impact with your social media, but they only tell a fraction of the full story. If you spend too much time on checking who follows you, how many comments and likes and ReTweets you got, you will end up wasting time in that instead of creating quality content. Concentrate on quality, not quantity, in both your content and the reactions. There are people who follow you only to get you to follow them back. They are not quality followers, because they won't be giving a shit about your content in the future.
Rather than being happy about having been followed by someone who follows tons of people, be happy about gaining that one follower, who appears to be more choosy about her follows. Instead of obsessing over getting spammy, pointless comments, get exited about that one thoughtful comment. Likes, comments and follows are not always a sign of great content. They can be a sign of a person, who follows, likes and comments blindly to gain more follows, likes and comments.
7. Don't take it so seriously
Fine, your business is serious. And you are a serious person. It's all very serious. Except that it isn't. Don't take social media too seriously. Nobody wants to see only your very businessy Tweets and boring, overly branded and too clinical Instagram photos for very long. Have some fun. Post a funny pic, share a funny animal video, make a joke, publish something less edited, be a person. That said, there's a difference between being fun and being a tool. Don't disrespect a person who hurts, don't be offensive/racist/misogynist/asshat, don't troll or bully for it seemed fun for you. Being a douchebag doesn't make you fun.
Even if you use social media for business or getting a job, you don't have to be always professional. You are a human being with other interests than your job or your business. Show those interests, show your sense of humour, show your personality.
Also give yourself some slack. If you don't feel like posting, don't post. Just don't let excuses get the best of you. Giving yourself some slack doesn't mean slacking off.
What are your best tips for the more effortless and less time-consuming social media?
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