Social Media Tools That Help Optimize Your Time

By Kristi Hines

Published April 8, 2015

Do you struggle to keep up with social media tasks?

Are you looking for ways to get more done?

Whether you need help maintaining your social accounts, finding content to curate or monitoringcompetitors, there are ways to simplify these processes.

In this article I'll share a number of tools to maximize the time you spend on social media.

Discover how to optimizeyour time with social media tools.

#1: Hire Out Social Media Signups

If you don't have social media profiles and pages set up for your business yet, hire someone or use aservice to create them for you. Companies like KnowEm offer a service where for about $85, theywill create full business profiles and pages for you on 25 essential networks.

Get your profiles and pagesset up on the top 25 social networks.

Your name will be reserved on various social networks, and you can build up the profiles at a laterdate. Once you passed the setup hurdle, it will be much easier to maintain them.

#2: Monitor Your Social Inbox

Stay on top of your interactions on a regular basis. Rather than constantly checking all of your socialaccounts, use a platform like Sprout Social to monitor your latest notifications from Twitter andFacebook.

Set up a social inbox to makeit easier to find and reply to public and private social messages.

After you connect your social profiles to the app, just go to your social inbox to see public mentions,comment replies and private messages from Twitter and Facebook accounts. You'll still have to visitLinkedIn and Google+ to stay on top of those notifications.

#3: Keep Tabs on Your Reputation Via Email

To find out when people are talking about you, your business, products or services, set up a servicesuch as Mention. You'll get notified via email anytime someone on social media mentions yourbusiness using a branded keyword search.

Set it up so you're alerted toany mentions of your business on social media.

After you receive an alert, click on the links for each mention to view it in your Mention dashboard.You can then choose to reply inside your dashboard or view the original post on social media.

#4: Curate and Share Valuable Content

Posting valuable content from your industry is an excellent way to keep your social media accountsactive. Plus, it helps position your business as an excellent source of information.

Use IFTTT (If This Then That), Feedly, Gmail and Buffer to easily share curated content to yoursocial media accounts. IFTTT is a free service that automates actions among different platforms,while Feedly allows you to subscribe to your favorite blogs and Buffer helps schedule updates toTwitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.

If you don't already have a Gmail account, grab a free email address and continue.

Here's how to curate content to keep your social media accounts active.

First, connect your social media accounts to Buffer and set up a schedule for each account.

Set up a schedule on Buffer

for all social media accounts.

Next, select all of the accounts you want to post your curated content to as the default. Just checkthe circle to the left of each chosen profile.

Check the circle next to the default social accounts you want topost to on Buffer.

Now, go to Buffer's How to Email Guide. Leave this page open, so you can grab the custom emailaddress that allows you to schedule updates to Buffer via email for IFTTT.

Go to Buffer's How to EmailGuide to grab your secret Buffer email.

Now, use Feedly to subscribe to the best sources of content within your industry. Create a freeaccount and use the search box to look for specific blogs or blogs on relevant topics.

Find the best blogs in your industry on Feedly, and thensubscribe to them.

Now that you have your favorite blogs and your Buffer info, use IFTTT to put it all together.

Sign up for a free IFTTT account. Then create a recipe that allows you to post any items you save forlater in Feedly to the social accounts you selected as default. The recipe will start with Feedly as atrigger channel.

Create an IFTTT recipe usingFeedly as the trigger channel.

Once you've connected your Feedly account to IFTTT, you'll get to select articles saved for later fromthe following options as a trigger.

Create a trigger to have newarticles saved for later.

Next, select Gmail as the action channel.

Set up Gmail as the actionchannel.

Connect your Gmail account to IFTTT, so you can select Send an Email as an action.

Use Send an Email as theaction.

Now, configure the email to your secret Buffer email address, the Article Title field as the subjectline and the Article URL in the body of the email.

Customize your email to tellBuffer what to post to your default social accounts.

Once you've saved your recipe, test it by going to your Feedly account and saving an article for later.Just click on the bookmark icon next to a post you like.

Save articles for later inFeedly.

Now, go back to your IFTTT dashboard and click on the refresh icon to force your recipe to run.

Force your IFTTT recipe torun to test it.

After a few minutes, go to Buffer and you should see the post you saved for later in Feedly in yourdefault social accounts' queues in Buffer.

Review your saved articlefrom Feedly in your Buffer dashboard.

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This may seem like a long setup. However, once everything is connected, all you have to do is visitFeedly on your desktop or use the Feedly app on your mobile device, and save good articles for later.

All of the social media accounts you marked as default in Buffer will share those articles with youraudience at the times you scheduled them.

#5: Research Your Competitors' Social Media Presence

Another way to assess and reconfigure your social media strategy is to see what others in yourindustry are doing.

Rival IQ is a powerful competitive research tool that allows you to quickly add your business andyour competitors to a landscape. Rival IQ pulls all of their social media data into one dashboard, soyou can see how they're performing compared to you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+,Instagram and YouTube.

View the social dashboard onRival IQ to see how your social media performance stacks up to your competitors.

You will even receive regular email updates to alert you to top content and performance on socialmedia.

Read a simple recap of yoursocial media audience growth, activity and engagement.

This report allows small businesses to keep tabs on their (and their competitors') social mediapresence without having to use multiple tools or platforms.

#6: Publish Social Media Testimonials

In most cases it's time-consuming to collect testimonials and recommendations. The need to formatthem so they display properly on your website even adds to the challenge.

Here's the good news. If you offer great products and services, you likely already have people whoare singing your praises on social media. Easily display positive mentions from Twitter and yourFacebook page on your website, using the embed code provided by both networks.

On Twitter, click the three dots under a tweet to get the embed code.

Easily embed tweets astestimonials on your website.

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On Facebook, just click on the timestamp for posts on your Facebook page. You can then click on thedrop-down arrow at the top right to get the option to embed the post (sometimes this is under MoreOptions).

Find the embed code onFacebook to post testimonials from the platform on your website.

Although LinkedIn doesn't have an option for embedding their recommendations on your website,

there is an easy way to do. Start by connecting Spectoos to your LinkedIn profile to import all ofyour recommendations. Then, select the recommendations you want to display.

Select LinkedInrecommendations to display on your website.

You'll receive an easy-to-install embed code that you can add wherever you want yourrecommendations to show. Get one recommendation at a time for free, or for $10 a month you canadd the widget, which will show up to 12 at a time and slowly rotate through the rest.

Add an interactive LinkedInrecommendations widget to your website.

Back inside the Spectoos dashboard, you'll get stats on the recommendations that get the mostattention for your business.

See which recommendationsresonate best with your customers.

Use testimonials you get from your social media to raise your profile and build your business.

#7: Outsource Routine Social Media Activities

While a social media presence is important for any business, some businesses have absolutely notime to handle their social media. Individuals who manage a business on their own have to focus onthe products and services they deliver. Or maybe they just don't have the time to learn how to do itproperly.

Fortunately, outsourcing your social media management is another option. Hire someone to keep italive until you can devote more time and resources to it.

There are lots of great social media consultants and services designed specifically to help smallbusinesses run their social media for less. For example, 99 Dollar Social will update your Facebook,Twitter and Google+ accounts with new content once a day every day of the week (includingweekends) for $99 per month.

If you do decided to outsource, take the time to learn how the pros do it, so you can be a part of ortake over the social media plan someday.

Conclusion

Granted, some of these tactics may take a little time to set up, but the long-term benefit is worth it.

Social media will enhance your business presence. And it doesn't have to take all of your time to beeffective.

What do you think? How much time and energy do you put into your social media management?What tips and tricks do you use to maximize your time? Have you tried any of these social mediatools? Which do you find most effective? Please share your thoughts and recommendations in thecomments.

Tags: content curation, ifttt, ifttt recipe, kristi hines, online reputation management, social inbox,social media for business, social media management, social media signup, social media tactic, socialmedia tool

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