Social media networks are not just for friends to connect anymore — they’ve grown into lucrative marketplaces.
Top brands use social platforms to increase their market reach, learn about and identify their target audience, advertise products or services, and communicate with customers.
Being a social media manager can be very challenging. Social platforms don’t sleep, for starters, so how are you supposed to ensure your brand’s accounts remain active even during your off-hours?
Moreover, trending topics shift all the time, and it can be difficult to know which ones your brand should “hop on” and when. Lastly, social media managers often have to “wear many hats”, and are expected to perform tasks outside of their role.
The life of a social media manager is definitely challenging, but there’s a way to make it a little less draining.
1. Plan Your Content in Advance
According to All About Careers, social media managers work between 35 and 40 hours weekly. But these numbers can go up when deadlines are fast-approaching, leading to burnout. Fortunately, you can avoid this hassle by planning your social media content in advance.
Consider using a social media editorial calendar. You can use a spreadsheet to create your calendar or download social media calendar templates from platforms like Hootsuite.
This calendar includes all the tasks that need to be completed by the end of the week. Other details to add are dates and time, content information, platforms to share the content, etc.
It can help to differentiate your content by platform in this calendar.
Planning gives you enough time to create quality content and engage with the audience more effectively. It’s also very helpful when you’re expected to share content multiple times daily.
2. Schedule Your Posts
Post scheduling tools are lifesavers to social media managers. These tools allow users to schedule posts to go live at specific times. That means you don’t have to be awake, online, or even near a gadget to publish your posts.
NAVY Hair Care takes an omnichannel approach to content scheduling and planning, tagging products and featuring their own Instagram posts in a shoppable, on-site display.
Time your posts to ensure they go live at the perfect time for maximum visibility and engagements. This is especially useful if you have followers located in different time zones. It ensures your followers receive your message at the perfect time.
Remember that one of the factors that influence the success of social media marketing funnels is reaching your audience at the perfect time. Scheduling tools make that possible by ensuring you time your posts to the second.
Scheduling posts also increases efficiency and productivity. For example, you can use 30 minutes every morning to schedule posts for the day.
Once the posts go up, you can focus more time and energy on real-time engagement with your audience. You can apply this routine to multiple accounts as needed.
You also need to know the recommended posting frequencies for different platforms. It is advisable to post one time on LinkedIn, one to two times on Instagram, three times or more on Twitter, about ten times on Pinterest, and at least three times on Google+ per day. The period between subsequent posts can be about two hours.
3. Feature More User-Generated Content (UGC)
Customers like to see people like them on social media — content that blends into their feed instead of sticking out like a branded advertisement.
That’s why influencer marketing is growing! When you share UGC on social media, you don’t have to worry about creating your own content, and customers are often more engaged with UGC than traditional posts.
Direct-to-consumer brands in any industry can take advantage of UGC for social content. Delta regularly shares its customers’ adventures on Instagram.
Social media managers stand to benefit from a UGC and influencer marketing platform like Pixlee TurnTo to automate and diversify their content strategies.
One of the most Instagramed hotels in the world, the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, drove over 250 million impressions using Pixlee TurnTo-powered UGC across its social channels and website.
4. Automate Other Tasks
Social media automation is a top time-saving tip for social media managers, when it comes to UGC management and other day-to-day tasks.
Besides scheduling posts, technology allows social media managers to automate other tasks like data collection and reporting, social listening, and content curation.
With data collection and reporting tools, you will have analytics across all your social media pages under one platform. Therefore, you won’t have to visit each account to collect vital data.
That makes comparing your performance across multiple networks easier. Pixlee TurnTo also allows SMMs to map actual revenue to specific pieces of content and creators to help you determine which strategies and partnerships are working best.
Examples of the metrics collected by such automation tools are:
- Likes
- Comments
- Shares
- Follower growth
- Impressions
Your chosen tool will allow you to organize your data in easy-to-understand charts, which you can share with clients. Some tools will even compare your performance with industry benchmarks, giving you an average score.
Social listening tools will provide you with information about what’s being said about your brand. Consequently, you won’t have to manually search for pages that have tagged or mentioned your brand.
Automating content curation can also take your social media campaigns to the next level. You don’t want to post irrelevant content that won’t benefit your client or company. You also don’t want to waste too much time finding the perfect content for your followers, right?
Content curation automation can fix both issues. It helps you identify and publish relevant content within seconds. It also makes it easier to maintain active social media accounts.
Automating these tasks helps you save so much time. You can then utilize that time and focus your efforts on other more critical tasks like monitoring your metrics and enhancing your social media campaigns.
5. Prioritize Social Platforms by Target Audience
There is no point in posting content on several platforms and only receiving solid responses or engagement from one or two. Focus on platforms that generate meaningful results.
Your business type will determine the most suitable platform/s. While brands in the home decoration industry might see more engagement on Pinterest, restaurants and food companies may generate more buzz on Instagram. Social listening tools and tactics can help you identify which channels to focus on.
Furniture brand Million Dollar Baby shares UGC and branded content on Pinterest to help future parents design idyllic nurseries.
You can analyze social media users’ metrics to identify which platforms are likely to work for you. Most platforms publish these analytics publicly. You could also do customer research to determine which platforms are popular among your brand’s target audience.
Ultimately, you may have to test different social channels to identify the ones with the highest ROI for your client.
6. Identify the Best Platforms for Your Brand
From longstanding favorites like Instagram and YouTube to newer apps like TikTok and BeReal, there are so many social media platforms to choose from.
And with monthly updates and new features, it can be tempting to try everything, but you need to choose the right social media channels for your business.
Consider your brand’s goals, resources, current content types, your audience, your competitors and the industry you’re in. Use this information to form a strategic approach and identify the best platforms for your brand.
Continue your research as you find the platform that works best for you. For example, if your brand uses Instagram, seek platform-specific advice by searching “social media management tips for Instagram.”
7. Create a Routine for Your Day or Week
Routines make the world go round. Create a productivity regimen to help organize your daily, weekly and monthly workload. A classic to-do list is always effective—whether it’s using a physical planner or an iOS app.
Block off time on your calendar and dedicate it to specific tasks or projects. Experiment with productivity tools like Asana, Todoist or Hive— there are so many to choose from, so don’t be afraid to try something new until you find what works best.
8. Batch Similar Tasks
Think about which tasks are similar so you can strike everything off your to-do list.
For example, if you need to write social copy for several posts across several platforms, do it together. You can do the same for pretty much anything from creating social graphics to scheduling content.
9. Upload and Schedule Social Media Posts with Time-Saving Tools
Work smarter, not harder with social media scheduling tools. A social media scheduling tool is software that assists with scheduling your posts across multiple accounts and platforms.
You save time because you can upload content and assign a date for publishing instead of having to do everything within the app. With social media management platforms like Sprout, you can schedule your posts in advance, upload content and track KPIs all in one place.
10. Understand your Best Times To Post
It’s not just what you post that matters, but when.
The best times to post on social media vary by network, content type and your brand’s audience and industry. Take a deep dive into research and review your brand’s social media data and analytics to decipher the best timing trends.
For example, if you notice your audience engages with your LinkedIn content in the afternoon more than in the morning, noon until 4 p.m. could be a sweet spot for posting.
11. Revisit your Social Media Content Mix
Variety is truly the spice of life. You need a mix of content to keep your audience engaged and grow your social presence. Consider adjusting your content mix based on your goals, resources, budget or brand identity.
To give you a little extra help, we created an interactive quiz to help you find the right social media content mix for your brand.
12. Create an Authentic Brand Experience for Your Audience
The heart of social media is human connection, so it’s no surprise that audiences are seeking brand authenticity. According to the Sprout Social Index™, 34% of consumers want to see authentic, less produced videos from brands on social.
Your brand can shape a genuine brand experience by studying and listening to your audience. What do they care about? Which posts do they like the best? What are they talking about online? Cater to these questions with the content you share.
13. Don’t be Afraid to Recycle Content Strategically
Instead of constantly coming up with fresh, relevant ideas for every post, think about how you can repurpose your best content. Repurposing your top-performing content saves you time and energy.
If you reuse the content you know works, it could perform well on another network too. Reshare a Reel on your story, create a carousel or edit YouTube videos into digestible snippets for TikTok.
14. Use Social Listening to Stay Up-To-Date on Emerging Trends
Social media managers are familiar with trying to get inside the head of their audience.
With social listening, you can become a fly on the wall and gain insights into your content. Social listening allows you to uncover conversations about your brand, keep a pulse on industry trends and learn more about your audience in general.
15. Use Saved or Canned Replies
Using saved or canned replies is a common tactic for escalation management. Think of these responses like an FAQ page. FAQ pages help facilitate customer care because they provide immediate solutions to common questions or problems—a templated response does the same.
Plus, conversational commerce is growing, so automated responses used in messaging apps and other tools can attempt to help customers before escalating to an agent in real time.
16. Set up Social Media Automation to Save Even More Time
As mentioned above, automated responses can help streamline customer care conversations.
Setting up other social media automation features like scheduling and chatbots saves you time, which is one of the biggest keys to productivity and organization.
Instead of posting or responding to every message manually in real time, you can rely on automation to lift some of the weight for you.
17. Automate Social Media Analytics and Reports
You can also reclaim more of your time by automating your social media analytics. Instead of starting from scratch every time you want to pull a report, set a reporting schedule to auto-populate your metrics of choice at a certain time period.
There are a variety of social media reports you can automate to make managing social media for your brand easier.
