Social media marketing strategies can get really complicated. There’s always so much to do and so little time. However, there are ways to keep it simple once you know how.

Know your niche.

Did you do niche research when you started your business? This should tell you your target market’s interests, pain points, problems, and spending limits. If you didn’t do any research when you started, now’s the time to start.

Definitely find out where they spend their downtime on the Internet and target those sites. There’s no point in spending your precious time on a social network if the ideal customer or client in your niche isn’t hanging out there.

Brainstorm hot content.

Hot content is the kind of content that will appeal to those in your niche. As you do your niche research, you will probably see the same questions coming up repeatedly. Make a list of them and create content that answers these questions. Be sure to create paid products that do as well. Create free products that lead to paid products.

Make your content work hard.

Every piece of content you create should work hard for you. One of the best ways to do it is to put it into more than one format.

For example, your content could be an article, top-10 list, or a PowerPoint deck. Your deck could become a video on YouTube which you would then embed on your site. You could also share the deck at popular sharing sites like SlideShare, owned by LinkedIn, which has very convenient sharing buttons for all of the major social networks.

You can break up blog posts into tidbits that you share on your social media networks. Take the best lines from your post and create pretty images in Canva to share on Facebook and Instagram. Take each point from a blog post and create an infographic for Pinterest.

Create a publishing schedule.

Once you create the different formats of your content, schedule it. You won’t want to publish all the different formats of your content on the same topic back to back, but you can use your blog scheduler to set the date and time in advance and, for example, publish one each month for several months.

If you are working alone, create your own calendar and follow it. The plugin Editorial Calendar for WordPress is incredibly useful. If you are working in a team, set up a shared calendar to make sure something of value is being published regularly.

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Use automated tools.

WordPress has a range of plugins that will create share buttons so people can just click to share to their social networks. I use Social Warfare* on my website. With Social Warfare* you can create custom Tweets and Pin descriptions to make it even easier for your audience to share your content.

WordPress also has plugins that will announce your new content on your social sites automatically, such as Social Networks Auto-Poster for creating a link to your content on Twitter.

Then there are specific tools that will allow you to schedule posts in advance. One of my favorites is Buffer, which links to a number of different networks, and Tailwind, which allows you to schedule Pinterest pins in advance. Buffer has both a free and paid levels, so you have nothing to lose by trying it out and seeing how useful it are. Tailwind also offers a free trial so you can check it out as well. If they make your publishing on social networks easier, the cost will more than pay for itself in terms of the amount of time you will save.

Make an appointment with social for 1 hour each day.

Social media can eat up your time if you’re not careful. So block out 2 times a day for 15 to 30 minutes each, morning and evening just for social media. This way you minimize the danger of getting distracted and wasting time mindlessly scrolling through your feeds.

Outsource

Once you get things organized, outsource the work to a reliable virtual assistant like me! Or if a VA isn’t in the budget right now, draft in your teen or a good friend and free up your time to build your business in other ways.