Save time while still being social

The one thing I have heard in the first six weeks here at PMQ Pizza Magazine is pizza operators telling us they are busy and social media is often the last thing they have time for or care to think about.

I understand.

Social media can be a lot of work. It is hard to keep up. Heck, even I have trouble some days checking in on each platform. This is why I choose one core social media (Facebook) to stay plugged into and check the others weekly.

Really, social media comes down to short cuts. How can you get your message out in a unified way and still be unique to each platform while not wasting 8 hours a day?

Here at PMQ Pizza Magazine, we use HootSuite to promote messages on each platform (we use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn Company Page and Groups). Hootsuite is a great service that allows you to work within a dashboard system to schedule out messages on various social media. Looking at your analytics  can show you when people read messages. Many of you check around 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. But we leave work at 5 so to reach out to you when online, we sometimes schedule our posts.

Sometimes, I schedule for a post to share on all of our social media. Take for example, our new magazine cover, which we shared last week.

Other times, I have a message that just works for Instagram and Twitter. And, rather than being tied to a computer, you can schedule messsages to send out at any time of the day or night, so you can be online while still living in the real world.

I've found HootSuite works well for a business. But there are various social media management tools that work well. Social Health Institute broke down the various types here.

But say you are only using Facebook and Twitter and scheduling posts and social media management just sounds too complicated. There are small tweaks you can make to help integrate the two to save time. While I usually do not recommend having your Facebook posts bleed over to Twitter or vice versa, to save time and still be making sure to post, it is helpful. Most have their Facebook going to their Twitter but you can reverse that. Here is the link to add Twitter to Facebook and here is how to integrate your Facebook posts into Twitter (and more on why you shouldn't if you have the time)

Are you on Instagram? Then take a photo there and easily share it on Facebook and Twitter therefore making three posts across platforms all at once.

Really can't find time to Tweet? Spend one day creating a a sharing program such as dlvr.it to post our your blog entry or whatever you want to make sure gets spread automatically. On Twitter you can also set up a program such as http://paper.li/ to put a daily or weekly post that aggregates interesting content from Twitter.

We also found this helpful infographic that shows you some helpful keyboard shortcuts:

What good tips do you have to save time?

You can always visit our social media so you don't miss a thing!
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