One of the biggest things I hear from small business owners is their fear that they “don’t have enough time for social media”. It is a huge concern that managing all of the social media will take up their whole day or that they will need to hire a new employee to manage it. 

Managing your social media nay take less time than you think. According to the 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, which surveyed 1,898 small business owners, the average time commitment was 6 hours per week in order to see results from social media. 

The most interesting thing was that small business owners just getting started with social media indicated that they spend only 1 hour a week managing social media, which the study indicates is not enough time to make a difference. But as time went on, business owners who had been doing it a few months longer, indicated that their time commitment is closer to 10 hours per week. 

The longer you have been using social media, the more time you spend on it because it becomes more integrated into everything you do. 

Here are a few tips to help you get started with spending more time with social media, while making it feel like less of a burden. 

1. Keep it running in the background: Instead of allocating one hour per day to social media all at once, why not try keeping your Postling dashboard up all day.

   I know some business owners who would try and spend an hour in the morning “doing all their social media stuff”. The problem with that is that you miss the real time interaction throughout the business day.

   Instead why not try keeping Postling open in the background while you work and checking it every once in a while. You will notice when people reply to your business during the day, and you will be able to respond to them in a timely manner. Your customers will appreciate that. This will help you better integrate social media into your regular work routine. 


2. Take pictures: Posting pictures to facebook and twitter is a really easy way to create online content. This might be as easy as posting a picture of new stock ad it arrives in the store, or tweeting a picture of today’s lunch special. The visual content is appealing to your customers and it is much more likely to generate conversations.


3. Use location based tools like Foursquare: Foursquare is a location based application where users “check-in” based on where they are. You make have heard of this tool because as a business you can add specials and deals from within the app that customers will see when they check in to your business.

   But you can also use Foursquare as a user and check-in to places when it relates to your business. For example if you run a rock climbing supply store you can check in when you go rock climbing. This would let your local customers know about great new rock climbing locations near them.

If you have any other tips on how to better integrate the time you spend on social media into your day, please let us know in the comments. 

Sarah Cooley | Community Manager | sarah@postling.com