Start The New Year Off With An Online Plan

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As we ring in the New Year many people are taking a look at their business models and goals for the upcoming season.  Many of them are also planning to spend more time and resources in acquiring new customers and being found online.  Most understand that people are doing more research and starting their buying journey well before they decide to reach out with questions, so committing to increasing their online efforts is wise but also tricky.  Most of the time I here similar questions: But where do I begin?  Should I start posting to Facebook?  Invest in an Instagram photoshoot?  And most importantly how do I get the most out of the time and the money I am investing?  Here are my 3 tips to helping you get the most out of your online efforts this year!

Make a plan. The first step in making sure that something happens is to WRITE OUT A PLAN.  This is especially true when it comes to social media.  Typically, in the businesses I have worked with, as soon as it gets busy all the great plans you had for social are out the window.  Think about it.  If your business is humming along and you have enough work to keep you busy you aren’t putting a lot of focus on the activities you do to drive new client acquisition.  Since most people are just fumbling through social anyway they are just fine to let it slide.  Once things start to slow down and then they wish they’d kept up on it.

To make sure that things get done I have to put them in my calendar.  They just don’t happen if I don’t.  So, each week I have a standing appointment to map out my digital media plan.  This includes blogs, email blasts, social, and other online items.  Once I have the time blocked in my calendar and a map for what it is I am trying to accomplish, I can complete the tasks much faster, and easier.  I have created a guide that breaks down online tasks to each day of the work week so you can complete them in under an hour a day. 

Maximize your efforts.  When it comes to trying to be seen everywhere online there are A LOT of things that you can do.  There are also a lot of ways to waste time trying to do them.  I recommend that you have one main online platform that is your base.  It usually should be the one that you know the most about or actually enjoy using.  When you try to divide your time between all the options out there all you end up with is frustration.  Each platform has a different audience and requires different content to be truly effective.   So decide which you want to master and then branch out from there.  Now that doesn’t mean you have to abandon all other platforms, but you also don’t want to do what I call “sprayin’ and prayin’.”  You can have a presence on all the major platforms in under an hour a day but do note that this does not mean you will necessarily be doing a great job on all of them.  To see how I make sure to show up everywhere online be sure to grab my, “How to be seen everywhere online” guide.   

Use smart automation.  Don’t over automate your online presence.  I definitely can tell who has a robot DMing me in Instagram and so an everyone else!   There are some great ways that you can accomplish some necessary tasks using automation but be smart about it.  You still have to show up and engage with people to truly win them over.  I like to use scheduling programs to ensure that my posts are going out at the optimal times but then I still go in and engage with the comments.  While I am a huge fan of planning out your content in advance you have to be sure you don’t just set it and forget it.    I use Hootsuite to schedule all my posts except for Facebook.  I do all my Facebook scheduling inside of Facebook.  (learn how here) I also use a program called Preview to help me layout a beautiful Instagram feed before I push my posts into Hootsuite.  These types of automation allow me to be more effective online without removing the “me” part.