Social media is the best way to build an audience without paying a penny. Social media automation helps to save a large portion of your time. Most people spend approximately two hours on social media every day.
Combine social media automation with everything else you do in your work and life, and there isn’t much time left for you to explore new opportunities.
For a while, I focused on social media to build my audience. It worked, but it took up most of my time. While I did grow my social media audience and write blog posts, that was just about all I could handle and nothing much beyond that happened with my business.
Now I create monthly training courses, play the piano, and still dedicate time to grow my social media audience. Only now I get to take true vacations rather than working vacations. How? I simply automated my social media efforts.
Scheduling my own tweets and growing my social media audience are things of the past. Tweets still show up on my account, and my audience still grows, but I have outsourced those tasks to other people I can trust.
There is a point at which outsourcing becomes necessary. It’s the only way to explore more opportunities and increase revenues. Plus the incentive of taking real vacations more often helps too. Let’s be honest about that.
Without any further adieu, here’s the pathway to social media automation:
List All Of The Things You Currently Do For Your Social Media Accounts
What tasks do you currently handle for your social accounts? Are you engaging with your audience, looking for content to share, scheduling posts, conducting content research, growing your audience, or anything else?
Chances are you perform at least one or more of those tasks. Right now, quantity matters less than the work you’re putting in to accomplish these tasks over time, and the time you spend on your social media initiatives on a daily basis.
As you see results from your efforts, the more time you’ll spend on maintaining and increasing those results. An effective social media strategy helps you maximize your time, but you will still spend time on those tasks, regardless of your strategy.
I used to schedule over 700 tweets each week before I hired someone to do that for me. It took me about 30-45 minutes each week to schedule that many tweets through repeated CSV file uploads and looking through the tweets to make sure everything appeared the way it should. Certain tasks like those ate away at my time.
Even though these tasks are necessary for promoting yourself on social media, they eat into precious time. And you can easily outsource these tasks to other people for a relatively low price.
It should take you 15-30 minutes to create the list of your social media tasks and an approximation of how much time you spend on each. You may get the main tasks down in 2-5 minutes, but if you dig deeper and consider every part of your social media strategy, you will likely discover more tasks that you can outsource.
List All Of The Tasks That You Can Add To Your Social Media Workload
We naturally want to be present on multiple social networks in order to get the most out of each. While it is tempting to spread out your efforts, a better approach is to master one social network at a time.
With that said, it is possible to expand your social network presence with the help of outsourcing. Make a list of all the networks that need attention and note which of your current networks are top performers. It may not be necessary to be active on every network; it depends on your goals and audience.
Before I started to outsource my social media, I wouldn’t have thought of using Instagram. Now I get the most out of that network because my freelancers take care of the images and posts for me.
I didn’t have the time to do all of that work. But rather than turn that excuse into a barrier, I found a way around the barrier. It’s just like walking around a maze instead of going through it. The only way out is through.
Writing a list of your social media tasks will help you realize exactly how much you are doing and how much time you are spending on each task. The list is not meant to add to your workload. Rather, it should help you prioritize the tasks you can outsource in the future.
What About ROI?
Outsourcing is a great way to save time. But it costs money. Some people spend thousands of dollars per month on outsourcing, and I don’t blame them. The more money you spend on outsourcing, the more time you save.
Unfortunately, money does not grow in trees. And the main thing on every entrepreneur’s mind is how to make a profit.
“If I spend all of this money on outsourcing, how am I going to make any money?”
If you ask and answer this question often enough, you will be surprised at the insights you uncover. Sure, automating your social media workload is no guarantee that you’ll increase your profits.
I could schedule tweets myself and save money. And I am not necessarily adding to my profits each time I pay someone to schedule tweets for me. Just as I don’t make a profit when I pay someone else to edit my videos.
However, the time I save (here’s the key part) can be repurposed into efforts that lead to bigger profits. Never before have I had so much time available. And never before have I made as much revenue as I am making now!
If you know how to use your time correctly, you also know how you can increase your profits by social media automation.
In Conclusion
As social media continues to evolve, more opportunities pop up. But along with those opportunities comes a heavier workload.
We must learn how to use social networks and build our audiences. And we must also pursue new opportunities while maintaining our current workloads. But if you put too much work on your shoulders, everything will come crashing down.
Your workload may be weighing you down; it’s only when you take some of that weight off your shoulders that you begin to realize how much weight was actually there.
It’s like exchanging your worn out running shoes for a new pair. You never knew how badly you needed a new pair until you put them on your feet.
Social media automation makes you conscious of the difference between that old pair of running shows and the new pair.
Likewise, we may not realize how much work we put on ourselves until we see things from a different perspective and take automation and outsourcing more seriously.
What are your thoughts on social media automation and outsourcing? Do you focus more on increasing revenues or finding more time in the day to complete all of your tasks? Sound off in the comments section below.
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