This week’s article comes from a question asked by one of our clients, Matthew Leech. He asked us for some advice on what to do when work gets chaotic and you are finding it hard to find the time to devote to Social Media.
It’s a common problem in Adviser-land, especially as clients always need to come first. On one hand you have clients who need to be looked after, but on the other hand, you need to be doing the right things to make sure there will be a steady stream of clients walking through the door tomorrow.
So today, we would like to share with you The Social Adviser’s best ideas for managing Social Media with limited time available;
1. Some of the busiest Advisers we know are also the most active on Social Media. Many of them use tools such as Tweetdeck to not only manage their Twitter activity but schedule their Tweets. This means they can spend an hour on a Sunday night ‘loading up’ their Tweets for the week, and deciding when they get released. Easy and efficient!
2. If you don’t have time to write content, why not just ‘Like’, ‘Share’ or ‘Retweet’ someone else’s content? It is a really important part of relationship building, it means you remain in the Newsfeed of your connections (even when you’re busy) and best of all – it can take as little as ten seconds to do (you can even do it while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil!)
3. Similar to our first idea, there are generally two options for posting content on Social Media: ‘Creating’ content where you are producing something unique or original such as an article, video or opinion piece, and ‘Curating’ content, where you are sharing the work of others (e.g. posting a link to someone else’s article, video or opinion piece). Consider going into ‘curation-mode’ during busy times, so you can maintain a Social Media presence with minimal time outlay.
4. If things are a bit quieter than usual or if you are ‘on a roll’ one day, make the most of it by writing multiple articles or creating a few videos. This provides you with a ‘war chest’ of content which you can then share during the busier times. Some of the best Social Advisers we know are doing this as a habit.
5. Finally, you may need to ask yourself if you need to be as busy as you are! In fact, efficiency gains are often the forgotten element of Social Media which can add enormous value to your business. In our most recent client survey, over 90% of all firms reported Social Media had saved them time in their business (by both shortening the time required to engage a client and allowing them to service clients more efficiently). Perhaps there are some systems you should implement now to stop this chaos happening again…