One of the most common problems for new business owners is managing their time when using free marketing strategies. Many individuals feel that free marketing, specifically social media marketing (Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, etc), is too time-consuming and overwhelming.
Individuals aren’t sure what to focus on, where to spend their time and how to balance all of their varying marketing platforms. As a result, many individuals end up spending hours and hours every day marketing their business.
It does not need to be this way! Of course, free marketing is going to take some time and energy every day but, it should only take you between one and two hours if you work smart and strategically.
Here are 7 time management strategies to help you work smarter, as opposed to harder.
1) Narrow Your Focus
There are hundreds of free marketing platforms to choose from. You can’t possibly market on all of them. My rule of thumb is to pick five free platforms and focus your marketing efforts there.
You will never succeed if you try to conquer too much. Remember, you do not want to be a “Jack of all Trades, Master of None!” You want to master a few marketing strategies well.
2) Spend Time Each Day on “Creation” and “Maintenance”
Every day you should “create” new information. This can be accomplished by writing an article, shooting a video, creating a group (FaceBook, LinkedIn), etc. The new information that you create doesn’t have to be long and time-consuming. For instance, you can shoot and 3-minute video and upload it into YouTube all under fifteen minutes time.
In addition to creating information, you should spend time each day maintaining your sites. This can be accomplished by making MySpace friend requests, writing on Facebook walls, adding LinkedIn connections, posting to Twitter, etc.
If you divide your time between creating information and maintenance, you will be working smarter.
3) Set an allotted amount of time for marketing each day.
You want to approach your marketing with a plan. And that includes a plan for how much time you will devote each day to marketing your business.
If you simply “start marketing” without any sense of how much time you will devote, you will be extremely non-productive.
I generally recommend spending 1-2 hours every day actively marketing your business.
However, you also do not want to spend more time than necessary on marketing. If you log into Facebook and begin “to market” without a plan of action, you might still be there six hours later. So, decide how much time you will spend on marketing and stick to it.
4) Use a Timer
Using a timer might sound silly, but it is certainly a trick that I have always relied on. When I am writing an article, I set my timer for 30 minutes. I give myself exactly 30 minutes to write my article. If I don’t finish, then I will have to finish tomorrow.
You’d be surprised how much more efficient you are when there is a timer clicking away in the background.
5) Connect Your Accounts
Make sure that you connect all of your social media and information accounts that you can connect.
As an example, you can add your Twitter account to your EzineArticles account. Then, whenever you publish an article, your Twitter account will be automatically updated with your newest article.
Again, you can add Twitter to your FaceBook account, so that your “Twitters” appear on your FaceBook profile. Take some time to investigate all the ways that you can integrate and connect your accounts together. This will save you valuable time in the long-run.
6) Recycle Your Efforts
Whenever I write an article, I reuse it in many different ways. Here is an example:
Imagine that I write an article titled, “7 Ways To Market On FaceBook.” I, of course, publish that article in multiple article directories.
However, it doesn’t stop there. Then, I post that same article to my blog. After that I use the basic concept from my article for a YouTube video. After that, I Twitter about that concept as well.
The point is that when I have a new concept, I reuse that concept as many times as possible.
7) Track What Works and Focus Your Efforts There
You will soon find that when it comes to free marketing and social networking that it’s often difficult to accurately track your marketing statistics. For instance, when using PPC (pay-per-click) it is simple to add a code to your website and find out exactly how many people are visiting your website, opting-in to your form and making purchases.
This isn’t as simple when it comes to social marketing.
However, there are activities that you will notice add to your business success and activities that don’t do a thing for your business.
As an example, I found that managing all the “application requests” from FaceBook was becoming quite a chore. So, I decided that I just couldn’t take the time to respond to every Christmas ornament, Starfish, etc. that I received. I had to begin to “ignore” those application requests.
You will need to make the same decisions.
Remember, free marketing work. In fact, I truly believe that free marketing often works better than paid marketing.
However, if you are going to optimize your free marketing plan make sure to implement these seven tips to help you effectively manage your time and energy.
Learn more about the author, Jessica Swanson.
Jessica;
Very well done! I find that many clients don't follow your advice and end up using their social media marketing time as a form of procrastination. They become too busy to do the really important tasks that their operation needs.
Thank you.
Robert-- Arago Partners LLC
Jessica, I love your "use a timer" tip. I too find a shorter burst of time & effort can yield the best results -- so important in social media and other areas as well! Many thanks for this reminder and all your other ideas.
Great tips. Its really important to keep track on time spent for marketing efforts and again it should be in right direction.
Thanks for tips jessica
Great Article, Jessica! Thanks for the great pointers.
Good tips, Jessica, and OMG, those Facebook apps drove me crazy. I responded for a short time, then got wise. (Just say no to virtual cupcakes and online hugs...)
I want to give people who send them the same advice parents give pre-schoolers: "Use your words."
Well said! I appreciate how you've organized your thoughts for us. Nicely done.
Great Article!! Social Media can be very time consuming and that is when a Virtual Assistant comes handy to help out with the task.
I have many clients that come to me prior to working for them, saying they dont have the time and that they don't see results. After I speak with them and give them details on what to do to make it easier on them, they feel la huge weight is taken off their shoulders.
Nothing should be a burden when it comes to business.
Serena Carcasole
Jessica , great article , I think that is beneficial for lots of us , I promise to start my timer from now on , cause time is more valuable then money , you can get more money , but you can't get more time . Thank you so much .
Michaela Meisel
Thanks for some practical help that I really need right now. Sometimes, marketing our small businesses can be overwhelming and important tasks are left on the table because of our busy schedules. Planning is the key and you made that easy for me to do today!
Jessica, all great points-thank you! I especially like the piece about recycling your content across different platforms-in fact, this is one of my resolutions this year. I really want to get more use out of the time that I invest in my blog posts. I also think you first point is critical about narrowing your focus. For me, my primary outlets are my blog, Twitter & LinkedIn, and by focusing on these 3 it helps me to be a lot more productive when investing time on social marketing.
Jessica,
Great tips. I especially like the "Narrow your Focus." I now use Twitter, FB fan page( let go of my group there) and LI ( keep a book group there because more of my audience there--primarily business like biznik. and here at biznik. For article marketing, from my 11 year research and my books, I submit the same article to only one of the high-traffic sites such as ezine articles and hubpages because of duplicate content rule. Each article must be 50-60% unique for each submission. My word press blog is going up in a week or so for book, article and web writing content already used on the net. We will recycle infor into that one.
The net is always changing, and we need to stay up with these changes. Thanks for you insights. I see others here also focus on just a few networks. And I also use a virtual assistant to do some of the submissions. It makes great use of your time, so you only have to do so much.
It's great fun to be here and interact with you!
Judy Cullins The Book Coach
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