It’s only natural that when time is tight in the face of increasing workloads and looming client deadlines, investment in social media output can dwindle. But if you put a best practice framework in place ahead of time you can ensure that you are still reaching your audience in even the busiest periods.

Using the few simple steps below you should be able to ensure that you stay ahead of the game, and don’t fall foul of showcasing a series of social media channels on your website that look dated as a result of no recent updates.

1. Monitoring

Set aside a few hours a week for monitoring your channels and collating any relevant material for interacting with at a later date.

Taking screenshots of interesting posts, or bookmarking urls, can save you time later on and leave you with a bank of relevant, and topical material that you can draw upon when required.

2. Scheduling

Where possible schedule your posts ahead of time, at regular intervals, using a social media planning tool such as Hootsuite – that way your social media accounts can be ticking along nicely even if you’re knee-deep in a new business proposal, press release or presentation.

3. Get ahead

When you do get a bit of down time, use this wisely to put together generated content for your posts. When writing these think about the products and services you offer that you want to get across to your clients.

Alternatively, industry related opinion pieces, office news, or client updates can keep your audience interested in you and give you a bank of posts to hand that are ready to go even when that new project hits!

4. Retweets/likes

When time is really against you, a simple retweet or Facebook like on a topic relevant to your business, or a client post, can go a long way to showing that you are still engaged and in touch with what’s going on even when you don’t have the time to post your own content.

5. Multi-channel

Don’t be afraid to use the same content across all of your social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc.). Your audience will connect with you in different ways so don’t worry about bombarding them with a repetitive message.

Just make sure to tweak these slightly across the different channels to allow for word limits, visual aspects and differences in tone and style.

In summary:

As we all know social media is increasingly important in this digital age, and it is vital that you don’t get left behind. While it is easy for it to fall to the bottom of the ‘to-do’ pile when things get hectic, if you bear the above in mind you should be able to maintain your social media presence, and still nail those deadlines. Result.

Hopefully this acts as a great guide to get you started or enhance your existing social activity. We obviously recognise there are more intricate and complex elements that can elevate your social media engagement to the next level. More on those in a future blog!