In today’s episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, I’m going to be answering one of your questions. I have a fabulous question from Ali, who asked how to be more consistent on social media the easy and lazy way.
Let’s dive on in!
This question was submitted by the fabulous Ali Bengough.
Ali is the face behind Ali Jayne and you can find her at facebook.com/alijaynecoach.
Ali’s question is:
“Hi Tash! Do you have any tips on how to create a social media ecosystem the easy and lazy way, such as with batching? I find the consistency difficult to maintain, particularly when I need substantial time to retreat and recover my energy when dealing with heavily emotional client work. Thanks so much!”
Thank you, Ali, for this question. It’s something that I get asked quite regularly, and if you haven’t already checked out my previous Q&A episode where I answer a question about social media for introverts, I think that that would be a great one to check out as well.
For you Ali, I have six specific tips on how you can be more consistent on social media in a way that feels easy and lazy, and allows you to really enjoy it as well.
1. Chase your joy
If you absolutely adore being in Facebook groups and engaging with people, then make that the core part of your strategy. If you love doing little snippet videos, then do that. And if you love having deep and intense one-to-one conversations with people, you can do that on social media.
What we want to do is actually create a social media strategy that plays to your strengths and really lights you up so that you can be more consistent on social media.
Social media is social.
You need to find the social media strategy that brings you joy.
Whether what you love is:
- Talking one-to-one
- Talking one-to-many
- Written
- Visual – making pretty pictures and infographics
- Being on video
- Doing audio
You can totally do any of those.
Find the social media strategy that brings you the most joy.
Don’t just come from a place of wondering how much this strategy will make your business. If you don’t enjoy your social media strategy, we’re going to pick up on that energy. If you’re just dialling it in, thinking about how much hard work it is and that you don’t want to be doing it, we’re going to pick up on that in your language, in your tone and also in the energy behind your posts.
Enjoy your strategy.
2. Focus on high conversion strategies
High conversion strategies require you to be in front of fewer people because you don’t need to reach as many in order to get the conversions that you need for business sustainability and success.
A high conversion strategy would be showing up in a couple of small groups where you can step up, be a leader, and be known for your business in that particular audience and get lots of referrals from that space.
That way there’s a high level of people knowing, liking and trusting you, and there’s a much higher conversion rate because people are feeling very connected to you.
Something like inviting people to send you a private message and taking the conversation one-to-one quickly, working with a few people and talking with a few people but doing it all one-to-one, is much higher conversion than just broadcasting onto social media over and over again.
By bringing together point 1 (find your joy) and point 2 (find a way to make it high conversion – and therefore you don’t have to reach as many people) you’ll be able to make it as easy as possible.
3. Batching and scheduling
There are many people who can help you with batching your content and scheduling it up. You don’t even need to do the scheduling part yourself.
But if you’re doing it yourself for now, set aside a small portion of time once a week or once every two weeks or even once a month, where you schedule up one post on your Facebook page per day for that period of time.
If you’re scheduling things up once a month, then schedule a post for each day for the next 30 days.
Something nice and simple that helps you to make it as easy as possible and allows you to be more consistent on social media.
Not all of your content has to be written exactly on that day and published organically on that day.
You can batch and schedule up some content.
I find this is really helpful for people who do intense work such as yourself, Ali. Sometimes it’s three or four days in a row where you just cannot be on social media and you really need to retreat.
If you’ve scheduled things up and you know that at least your minimum posts are going onto social media, then you can do that without guilt or worry.
Your minimum posts are going up, you don’t have to panic too much, and everything is taken care of.
Sure, it would be better if you could show up and be present with your audience more consistently. But if there are times when you need to retreat, you can do so with confidence and without feeling as though you’re sabotaging your business by taking time off.
That’s the last thing we want you to feel when you are looking after yourself.
4. Be consistent but boundaried
I think this is where a lot of people get drained by social media. They are on social media eighteen times a day, scrolling randomly, replying to that one message from someone, looking through their notifications, and they don’t have boundaries or structure around the way they are on social media.
I separate my business time on social media from my playtime on social media.
Woman checking notifications and being consistent on social media in business start-up
In my business time on social media, I usually dedicate about 25 minutes a day, where I have a set list of things that I do, and I don’t divert from that plan.
I will check any messages and respond, I will reply to any notifications or comments I need to reply to, and then I will jump into my own Facebook page, see what’s going on and see if I need to do anything organically. I’ll jump into my own Facebook group and do something, and then if there’s time in my 25 minutes (which there usually is) I can also jump into a couple of other Facebook groups, share some posts in there as well, cheer a few people on and do some commenting.
If I’ve done that 25 minutes – and I try and do it as early in the day as possible – the rest of my time on social media is joy time.
I don’t need to be on there if I don’t want to be on there.
I’m consistent, I’m there for 25 minutes a day, five days a week – I’ll usually have one day on the weekend that I skip and one day during the week that I skip – and I’m consistent, but I’m very boundaried with that time.
Whilst the kettle is boiling, if I choose to also scroll through social media, see what everyone’s up to and message a few friends, that’s my playtime. That’s personal time. It may be that some of the things I do in that playtime overlap with my business, but it’s extra, and it’s not a minimum requirement. If I don’t do it, I don’t have a problem with that because I have met my minimum requirements for the day on social media.
Be consistent on social media, but be boundaried about it.
5. Outsource
Outsource as soon as you can.
Especially when you are batching up content and someone else can do the scheduling for you.
My first ever Facebook scheduling hire was someone who I paid US$8 an hour through Upwork and I hired her for two hours per month.
Two hours per MONTH!
It cost me US$16 per month to outsource my content scheduling onto my Facebook page to someone else.
I still made the content – I was in that stage of creating videos, making little boards in Canva and writing up all of my content. All I did was just send the person a spreadsheet with all of the information in it – dates, what they had to post, and where the link to the image or video was if they needed it – and they did the scheduling part.
At first, it took me longer to set up that system than if I had just kept scheduling it myself. But I knew if I created a little system and I got it working at least efficiently enough that I could hand it over to someone else quite quickly and easily, that that would pay dividends in saved time and energy over and over and over again.
Setting up the spreadsheet and filling in the content probably took me two or three hours the first time, and then it got quicker and quicker and quicker, but the whole time, my US$16 per month stayed stagnant.
I was putting less and less time into my social media, but putting the same amount of money and getting much better results from that consistency.
Make sure you outsource as quickly as you can, get into the habit of creating systems and processes for yourself because it’s actually in that structure that you will find so much freedom.
6. Choose what’s easy for you
I can jump on video and talk as much as I like. It doesn’t drain me, in fact, it really energises me. So to me that feels way easier than writing out 100 posts for 100 days.
I would much prefer to show up on video more consistently, than show up with written stuff, writing long-form captions and all of those sorts of things.
I choose what’s easy for me.
90% of what I do on social media is whatever was easiest for me at the time.
It is allowed to be easy, and that’s often a mindset issue more than a strategy issue.
You think in order for your social media to work well, you have to:
- Work hard
- Do it perfectly
- Do it consistently without ever taking a break
- Have everything lined up
- Have everything perfect
That is just not true.
It is allowed to be easy.
20% of what you are doing is getting you 80% of your results. You just need to know what that 20% is, and make sure that that’s not the part that you skip when you feel like just doing the minimum.
If you’re just doing the minimum, do the 20% that gets you 80% of your results.
That’s usually the high connection, high conversion strategies, and being very present with your audience.
There’s absolutely no need to overcomplicate it.
I hope you found that helpful, Ali and everyone else reading as well.
To summarise, here are my six tips on how you can be more consistent on social media the easy and lazy way:
- Chase your joy
- Focus on high conversion strategies
- Batching and scheduling
- Be consistent but boundaried
- Outsource
- Choose what’s easy for you
Please come on over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, and let me know you’ve been reading episode number 227. I’d love to know which of those six things you are going to try in the next few weeks to make your social media strategy easier, lazier, more fun, more joyful and more effective for your business because you’re able to show up more consistently when you find the easy way.
If reach and conversion are areas you’d like to focus more on, and you do a lot of selling on Facebook (or if you’d like to), I actually have a free resource for you.
It’s my $0 Dollar Facebook Marketing Plan.
This is a free training that helps you to make more money from Facebook by getting better rates and better conversion.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
