The number one most limited resource that small business owners have is TIME. Small business owners have so much on their plate that social media just seems like another overwhelming task on their to-do list. But even though it takes a lot of time and it’s ROI is hard to quantify, social media is not something you can ignore. To help busy entrepreneurs and small business owners like you, here are the top 5 social media strategies that will save you time.

1. Identify reusable content buckets/categories
2. Create a content calendar
3. Draft your evergreen content in batches
4. Automate your posts using a scheduler app
5. Set a TIMER

Let’s explore each of these strategies in more detail…

How will these social media strategies save you time?

Did you know that 43% of small business owners spend 6+ hours working on their social media each week? And an additional 25% spend 6-10 hours! (source)

When you translate that into dollars, that is a huge investment! Of those 6 hours spent working on social media, how much of that time is actually posting? The answer is not much. When you drill down into the numbers, the most time-intensive activities for small businesses are figuring out what to post and searching for content.

What if you could cut down that 24 hours of effort to just 8 hours?! These 5 social media strategies will help you do just that! So let’s take a look at each one in detail.

1. Identify reusable content buckets/categories

One of the best strategies for saving time on social media is to identify content categories, or “buckets,” that you can reuse each week. This saves you from the “blank page” paralysis that can set in when you are starting from scratch. Identify 5-7 TYPES of content that you post regularly that relate to your business. You can essentially fill-in-the-blank each week. Coming up with social media content categories simplifies the whole process and saves you hours of headaches and frustration wondering what to post!

How to identify your Content Buckets or Categories

Your content buckets should relate to the type of content you put out, and they should be general enough to reuse each week. For example…

• A health coach who helps people develop healthier eating habits might decide that every week she will post: a client testimonial, a healthy eating recipe, a lifestyle tip of the week, a motivational ‘pep talk’ video, and highlight a service or product she offers.
• A local restaurant may choose to repost a client photo that tagged their account, post a happy picture of their staff behind the scenes, highlight a new menu item, advertise their event space, and post well-lit photos of their food.
• A service-based solopreneur may post highlights from a recent blog post, motivational quotes, coffee love images, client testimonials, promotions and discounts on services, a video tip of the week related to their industry, information about upcoming educational events, an audience-engagement question, and personality-driven posts that give insight into who they are as a person and what they value.

These content categories will give you a starting point when planning your content.

Take some time to sit and think about your business and what your audience would appreciate and respond to. Also think about how to provide VALUE to your followers. You want to provide content that Educates, Engages, and Entertains (read more about the 3E Strategy here).

Identify at least 5-7 categories and try not to post the same category two times in a row. This will ensure variety in your feed and present a more complete picture of you and your business.

2. Create a content calendar

I know, I know. It can seem like an unnecessary step to create a content calendar when you can just go ahead and start posting. (I was always the kid that would write my paper and then go back and write the outline!) But I promise you, this is one of the best social media strategies to help you – and your staff – feel in control of your social media and ensure that you are not scrambling for content at the last minute.

Your content calendar doesn’t have to be super complicated. I still use a paper calendar and write on it with pen! But you can also use your Google calendar and color code it so it stands out from the rest of your schedule. Google Sheets and Excel both have calendar templates that are easy to set up and use too.

I recommend the following 4 step process to flesh out your content calendar at the beginning of each month:

1. Identify any major holidays, seasonal shifts, meaningful observances, or social media days (like National Doughnut Day!) and create posts/write captions for these first.
2. Next, focus on educational events, promotions, sales, launches, etc. Mark those on your calendar to fill in later or go ahead and create the content if you have the details.
3. Make note of personal/professional milestones such as birthdays, business anniversaries, staff recognition, community events, etc. and mark those down.
4. Now take a look at your content categories and fill in all of the blanks in the calendar.

Here is a sample social media content calendar for your reference. You can download a sample social media calendar with conversational captions here.

Once you have your social media content calendar, it’s time to create your content!

3. Draft evergreen content in batches

Waking up in the morning and knowing that you SHOULD post to social media (even if you did create a content calendar!), but having no idea what image to use or what to write in your caption is one of the most anxiety-producing and time-wasting situations to be in. You can avoid this for the most part by setting aside 1-2 hours each week (or if you’re really good, each month!) to create your evergreen content in BATCHES.

That means that you sit down and produce a week or a month’s worth of posts at one time.

This is where having content categories/buckets is so helpful! There are some types of content that can be considered “evergreen,” which means they are not tied to a specific day or time. You can create a number of these posts at one time and use them as needed.

For instance, if you know that you want to post a motivational quote every Monday, then you can create all of 4 them for the month in no time! The same goes for testimonials, user-generated content, engagement questions, tips related to your business, etc.

Types of evergreen content to create in batches:

• Motivational quotes
• Tips related to your business/industry
• Industry statistics
• Storytelling posts
• “Inspo” reposts (with credit!)
• Video demonstrations/tips

If you plan to incorporate video content into your social media feed, it helps to batch create these as well. For example, a yoga studio might want to demonstrate a pose each week or a marketing consultant might want to film a weekly marketing tip. They just need to create a list of the poses/content to cover and block off time in their schedule to film it all in one day. If you’re worried about the videos all looking the same, bring a few tops or outfits and change in between videos.

This doesn’t mean your entire feed has to be pre-planned. You still want to leave room for timely topics and in-the-moment posts. But having this content already made and ready to go can be a lifesaver on those days you just have no time. If you don’t use it one week, just bump it to the next. That’s the beauty of evergreen content!

4. Automate your posts using a scheduler app

Out of all of the time-saving social media strategies that I recommend, this has to be one of the most important. I cannot overstate the usefulness of using a scheduling app to upload your content, write your captions and automate your posts! However, the effectiveness of an automated scheduler is improved by the first two strategies – to identify content categories, creating a content calendar, and then create your posts in batches.  That way, you can upload your images into a scheduling system, write out captions (or copy and paste them from another file) and set them to post automatically.

Most scheduling apps allow you to:

• Upload images from your camera roll and your computer
• Draft your captions and save them (even if they aren’t done)
• Drag and drop images/graphics and rearrange them to visually design your feed
• Save hashtags for easy addition to captions
• Send push notifications when it’s time to post (copy and paste) OR auto-post to your account

Just be sure that you have your Instagram and Facebook account set to a Business profile. This will enable the auto-post function and will allow you to cross-post to Facebook at the same time.

Scheduling apps also help to visually plan out the look of your feed and make sure that you are not repeating content or images too frequently.

***Later is my personal favorite and the one I recommend to all my clients. It has a free plan where you can schedule up to 30 posts each month for free. Out of the apps/programs that I’ve tried, Later has the best desktop version and real-time integration with its smartphone app. Going from desktop to phone is nearly seamless.

5. Set a TIMER

This is one of the best tips I can give you. I didn’t believe in the magic of the timer for the longest time, but it works! When you have a social media task to do, determine how much time you want to give to that activity. Set a timer and STOP when it goes off.

This will prevent you from going down a scrolling rabbit hole or driving yourself crazy trying to come up with a caption. Do what you can within that allotted time. Each week, I set a timer for 1 Hour and schedule all of my posts for the week.

How much time will these social media strategies save you?!

Once you’ve laid the groundwork by identifying your content categories (2 hours initial investment), drafting your content calendar (2 hours x month), creating your evergreen posts (1.5 hours x month), you should be able to write your captions and schedule your posts within 1.5 hours each week.

So instead of 24+ hours a month spent on social media, you can get it down to a manageable 8 hours a MONTH.

That’s 16+ hours that you can rededicate to your business or invest back into yourself!