How Much Time Should You Spend Each Week On Social Media Marketing?
Regardless of what size business you have, there is undoubtedly a need for social promotion. With so much of the world population actively engaged on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and so on, social is the perfect channel to reach your potential customers.
But that’s not the issue here, is it? You don’t need to be lectured on the importance of social, you already know. The question here is how much time should be spent actively carrying out social media marketing each week.
This question needs to be broken down into a few points but it all comes down to value propositions and the simple fact that there is no sure-fire rule for every small business. Every business is different, every market is different and what’s more, every customer base is different. So let’s break down the issue:
What type of marketing?
Are you simply posting some promotional information or are you trying to cultivate an online community? The answer is you’re creating a community, social media marketing is so much more than business to consumer channel, it’s a two-way stream where a business that cares can truly get some feedback and responses from the end-user, you can interact with your end-user and get to know them; why squander this, spend the time cultivating this community and they become your brand ambassadors and loyal customers.
What social media channel?
The amount of time spent strongly depends on which social media channels are being utilised, to simplify the matter, Twitter needs a lot more hours of active engagement than Instagram; why? Because twitter is reactive and a community has to be cultivated by being responsive in relevant conversations, it’s not simply a matter of scheduling a few tweets and hoping they’ll somehow go viral because everyone, everywhere will just love your product.
How much traction are you getting?
You’re a small business so one of the most important and valuable resources you have is time. There’s no point spending time on a specific channel or social media as a whole if you reap limited rewards. Pay close attention to what you get back in return and on any channel in which you get little to nothing back, consider only scheduling posts out to but focusing your attention instead on channels that you gain much more interests. Not every business will get maximum returns from social media marketing, some business models lend themselves better to physical channels or email marketing and there is nothing wrong with this.
So how many hours?
Social media is not simply a base to cover for small business, it’s your saving grace. Big brands and companies can’t simply spend the most and win on social, any business of any size can make a statement and create a community. Larger businesses usually have vast amounts of red tape, they have a set company tone and guidelines for social media dictating how they behave, this can limit them, and this is where your small business can win, you can be reactive and fun, you can make decisions off the cuff and be more flexible. The simple answer is, the more time you spend on social media marketing, the better!
But you don’t have the time to spare, you can’t spend 30 hours a week on social media spreading the word and cultivating this community, so how do you find the balance.
Some general tips are would be to spend a few hours a week scheduling some social media posts to drip feed throughout the week, using tools such as Buffer or Hootsuite you can schedule months in advance if you’d like. Scheduling some posts gives you the flexibility to engage when you have the time but remain active consistently. But the key here is that these scheduled posts are the bare bones, the minimum and more hours will need to be spent actively communicating.
Provisional schedule:
2 Scheduled posts a day
6 Posts a day ( 3 Scheduled, 3 responsive)
3 Posts a day
1 Post a day
Google+
1 Scheduled post a day
This is by no means the ‘one way’ to do things and is only some guidance, spend more time on the channels that make sense for you and that provide your small business with the most return on investment.
