One of the most valuable pieces of advice that I have ever been given in my life, is that there is NO NEED to recreate the wheel.  After all the wheel has been around for some time now. Now, that is not to say that the way you do things won’t be different or unique or that you won’t put your own classic spin on it.  I’m just saying, there is nothing new under the sun, from motherhood all the way to the position of CEO.  I try to apply this same concept to both my personal and my business/blogging/social media life.  That being said, here are a few simple tips to make managing your Social Media, that much easier.

1.   Plan ahead.  This is one of the reasons that you find so many bloggers and social media managers utilizing editorial calendars.  You will save yourself hours by simply pre-planning.  Ideally, we would all like to pre-plan our years, or maybe even our quarters.  I have not been able to realistically pull that off yet.  But, I do very well, when I try to at least pre-plan my month.
2.   Research.  The first step to effectively researching is knowing your market. (key demographic).  For example, if you are a Mommy blogger.  You need to know what other Moms are interested in.   Research can be an intimidating word.  But, for me the time I spend on Instagram, Pinterest, Online Shopping, and looking through magazines all qualifies as research. After all, you live in the age of technology, inspiration is literally at your finger tips.
3.  You are your greatest resource.  So, not only has it been done before but, there is a chance that you’ve done something like it or parallel to it before.  For example, when my husband and I decided to start our own Etsy Store, we literally stepped out on faith with no real retail experience as a point of reference.  However, our over 20+  years of combined customer service, technical and administrative experience proved to be invaluable.  What started out as an idea to sell pillows morphed into something much more.  We did not allow ourselves to get pigeon holed or stuck on our original concept and we were able to expand in ways that we would not have imagined.  In addition to that I was able to use my love for technology and organization to create templates to work within making our day to day processes painless. Work smarter instead of harder.
4.   The awesome thing about life and business  in general, is that practice makes better.  I won’t say perfect because we tend to shy away from that word these days.  So, I will say practice fosters progression. Which means that hopefully, you are constantly learning and getting better as you go.  If you started a blog,  chances are at the very beginning you probably were not too concerned with SEO, or just didn’t know too much about it.  Maybe your original plan was just to create engaging and meaningful content.  As time goes on you realize that this is not enough, more is needed in order to make blogging profitable.  So you delve further into your craft and learn how to be more efficient, what plugins to use how to get rid of spam etc.
5. As much as things change, they stay the same.  Valentine’s Day falls on the same date every year, as does Thanksgiving, Christmas and a host of other holidays.  What’s my point? Creating content is a big part of blogging and Social Media on a whole.  But, so is building on what you have already created. Depending on what your niche is, chances are that you find yourself discussing similar subjects during certain months and seasons.  You can use this chance to build on your older posts and update or just share, as is.  One of my favorite tools that helps me utilize past content is the “On This Day” section on the Facebook website.  Can I just say, best thing ever?  Not only do I get to go down memory lane every morning and see how much my little ones have grown through the years.  I also get access to content that I have shared through the years.  It could be a blog post, or Tips for Spring Break, or even an article I found relevant at that time. In addition to that, I  post an Inspirational post at the beginning of every day.  Guess what?  When I am strapped for time and don’t have time to create new content, I can pull from a post that I made the year before.  I can’t say enough about that one.

As you can see these tips are well within anyone’s wheelhouse.  So jump right in, and wow your followers with worthwhile content.  Do you have a tip or two?  I would love to hear how you manage your Business Social Media Pages?  What are your “go-to” tools?  Share your finds in the comment section below, I can  not wait to read them.