Earlier this month, DMA released our 2017 Social Media Calendar and along with the download, we asked marketers about their biggest social media challenge. What we’ve found is that the challenge identified most often by fresh produce marketers was “not having enough time to manage social media.”

With all the social media platforms available to marketers today, we understand how difficult it is to manage your time wisely and effectively. For those of you who share this struggle, we wanted to provide you with a few helpful tips to make the most of your budgeted time on social media.

Identify your purpose

Why is your brand present on social media? What are you looking to accomplish? If you’re on social media, you should have a clear strategy in place of how to accomplish an overarching goal for your brand. Establish a purpose with your social media presence and understand the “why” behind every post you share. Having this in place will make your time on social media more effective, because every post, photo, and link you share will be working towards that goal. Time will not be wasted on posts that aren’t in line with what your brand is setting out to accomplish.

Use the platforms that make sense for your brand

Dividing your time between platforms is important, but don’t allocate time to a platform your brand won’t benefit from. When creating your social media strategy, decide where your audience is present and active and spend your time establishing yourself on those platforms. For example, a B2B brand should consider focusing efforts on Twitter and LinkedIn, and refrain from spending too much time on consumer based sites like Instagram and Pinterest.  Brands often feel that more platforms equal more success, but focusing your brand’s voice where it counts will bring you better results.

Take advantage of helpful tools

As a social media marketer, you have access to an abundance of tools designed to save you time. At DMA, we’ve developed one of our own- the 2017 Social Media Calendar. This year’s calendar includes important holidays, events, and food-specific celebrations you can plan content for in advance. Download it for free and start drafting your content for the New Year.

One of the biggest advantages of social media marketing is that it allows for real-time, instant communication.  You can respond to customer questions quickly and jump in on trending conversations as they happen.  To free up your schedule for real-time engagement, have your content planned and slated in advance. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer allow you to schedule your content ahead of time. Some platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, have scheduling software built directly into the platform. Use these tools to maintain your brand’s consistency on social media without sacrificing time.

If you’re looking to make the most of your time allotted for social media, try to do more of what’s working. Use the analytics tools built in to each platform to find posts that performed well in the past. In a time crunch, you can rework the caption of your content and use it again. Just be sure not to do this too often- keeping content fresh is a key to keeping people engaged.

Prioritize your customers

In the world of social media marketing, one thing reigns supreme: the customer. Always, always respond to messages and comments from customers. You should spend the largest amount of time on this task- don’t sacrifice your time here for others!  Did you know that if you respond to 90% of messages within 90 minutes, Facebook will reward you with a “Very responsive to messages” badge on your page? Customers have grown to expect this type of responsiveness from brands, and they turn to social media as a resource that is available to them in any time of need. Prioritizing the customer and responding quickly to their questions or comments positions your brand as helpful and most importantly, human.

Social media is always on. There will always be a conversation happening, a message sending, and a hashtag trending.  So as a marketer, making smart choices for your social media strategy will lead to a discovery of time well spent and managed.

If you’re still finding that your time is best spent focusing on other aspects of your company’s marketing, you’re not alone! We know that your time is finite, so we encourage you to consider hiring an agency to help you manage your social media strategy. Feel free to reach out to us if you think a social media consultation and assessment might be right for you.