• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • May 20, 2022
  • Startup
    • Creating a Plan
    • Funding a Startup
    • Franchise Center
    • Getting Your Office Ready
    • Making Your Business Official
    • Marketing Your New Business
    • Personal Readiness
  • Run & Grow
    • Customer Service
    • Human Resources
    • Innovation
    • Legal
    • Operations
    • Risk Management
  • Leadership
    • Best Practices
    • Communication
    • Green Initiatives
    • Open Culture
    • Strategic Planning
    • People Skills
  • Sales & Marketing
    • Advertising and Lead Generation
    • Marketing Innovations
    • Marketing Plans
    • Online Marketing
    • Relationships
    • Sales Activities
  • Finance
    • Budgeting and Personal Finance
    • Payments and Collections
    • Tax and Accounting
    • Pricing Strategy
    • Working with Investors
    • Working with Lenders
  • Tech
    • eCommerce
    • Hardware
    • Software
    • Security
    • Tech Reviews
    • Telecom
  • Shop

SmallBizClub

Helping You Succeed

Home / SmallBizClub Digital Bootcamp / Is Social Media REALLY Worth Your Time?
Is Social Media REALLY Worth Your Time?

Is Social Media REALLY Worth Your Time?

1174 Views

Jan 23, 2014 By Stephen Woessner

sm-planningAs a business owner, hearing you should use social media is like hearing you should eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day: You know it would be good for you, but you have more pressing things to worry about.
 
You know social media gives you the chance to start conversations with prospects, engage with customers, and share your expertise. You know it can increase your Web traffic and conversion rates. Despite the obvious benefits, many small business owners feel they don’t have the time or expertise to maintain a social media presence.
 
I disagree. You can manage your social efforts by devoting as little as 15 minutes to them each day, and it doesn’t take specialized training. With a few minutes, a little creativity, and careful tracking, you can engage with your target audience and see real business results.

Maximizing Your 15 Minutes a Day

Spending 15 minutes a day scheduling outbound tweets, updating your Facebook status, posting to Google+, sharing a photo on Instagram, and linking to videos on your YouTube channel is a great way to stay top of mind and engage your prospects and customers, but where does all that content come from? That’s where the real time constraint kicks in.

The trick to maximizing your social media time is repurposing and reframing your most valuable and engaging content. Here’s an example: Say a local TV station interviews you about your business. You can post the three-minute clip to your YouTube channel and divide the original into 60-second “shorts” with embedded links to watch the full video or subscribe to the channel. Now, you have four new pieces of community-building content on YouTube.

You can also share the video through an email campaign and post those shorts one at a time on Facebook or Twitter. This approach maximizes your presence by drawing one piece of valuable content out into several different streams.

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Social Media

Repurposing your content to engage users across different platforms is the best way to get full value from your efforts, but you really have to keep an eye on the data to see if your campaign is working. Keeping your finger on the pulse of your social media following means you can tweak your approach in real time to fit your audience’s response.

Here are some vital metrics I recommend checking every week to evaluate the effectiveness of your social media marketing:

  1. Website traffic: Is the number of unique visitors to your website increasing? How is referral traffic from the social platforms you’re using changing?

    These numbers come directly from your Google Analytics dashboard. If the answer is “no change,” you probably need to work on creating more engaging content to draw your followers to your site.

  2. Conversions: Are your social media efforts leading to increased conversion rates? What content delivers the most conversions?
    It just takes a few minutes to set up conversion tracking on Google Analytics. Here’s an excellent step-by-step tutorial from Google to get you started.
  3. User response: Is your online community across your social platforms growing? What content has your community “liked” or shared?

    This is a simple measure of how well you’re engaging users and promoting your content. Let your most popular posts guide the topics of future content.

  4. Lead generation: Is your social media generating leads? If so, are those leads converting to sales?

    If the answer to either of those questions is no, take a closer look at your content. If your content is generating leads, you probably have a post-lead conversion problem.

 
SWhen used effectively, social media can be a worthwhile time investment for a small business. If you’re creative in repurposing your content, it is possible to maintain an active presence in just 15 minutes a day. But it’s not just about putting content out there and hoping for the best. You should always be measuring the return on investment of your efforts to determine what works best for your business.

How much time do you spend building your social media presence, and how do you measure its ROI?

Download Guide

Additional Resources

SmallBizClub Resources:

  • Leveraging Social Media
  • Video: How to Use Social Media Efficiently
  • How to Destroy Your Social Media Credibility Through Automation
  • The Small Business Social Media Cheat Sheet
  • The 10 Big Social Media Marketing Trends in 2014
  • How can businesses effectively utilize social media?
Videos:

  • Video: Building Your Action Plan for Social Media Marketing
  • Video: MC Hammer on the Role of Social Media in Marketing
  • Video: Social Media Marketing Webinar
  • 10 Questions to Ask When Creating a Social Media Marketing Plan
  • How to Build a Sustainable Social Media Marketing PlanVideos

Filed Under: SmallBizClub Digital Bootcamp

Stephen Woessner

Stephen Woessner

Stephen Woessner is a digital marketing expert, the bestselling author of “Increase Online Sales through Viral Social Networking,” a speaker, and an educator. He is founder and president of Predictive ROI, including its signature event, Predictive ROI LIVE.

Related Posts

  • 5 Easy Ways to Drive Traffic (Besides Search)
  • 4 Reasons Why Website Videos Add More Value Than Online Ads

Primary Sidebar

From the Editor’s Desk…

Small Biz Gems

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
A lecturer, poet, and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson was the leading voice of the New England Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century, which valued insight over logic while also advocating for humanity’s inherent goodness. This revelation comes from the closing paragraph of “Circles,” a chapter in his 1841 book Essays, First Series.

“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business.”  —Warren Buffet

 

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  —Thomas Edison

 

 

“You can’t ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”  —Steve Jobs

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
Subscribe to our Mailing List

Run & Grow

Small Business Guide to AC Repair & Maintenance

May 20, 2022 By SmallBizClub

Why Dropshipping Can be The Hallmark of Outsourcing for Your Business

May 19, 2022 By Efrat Vulfsons

convert-non-commercial-space-into-an-inspiring-office

5 Reasons Why Your Physical Office Layout Matters

May 19, 2022 By Boris Dzhingarov

3 Most Devastating Small Business Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)

May 17, 2022 By SmallBizClub

Footer

About Us

Small Biz Club is the premier destination for small business owners and entrepreneurs. To succeed in business, you have to constantly learn about new things, evaluate what you’re doing, and look for ways to improve—that’s what we’re here to help you do.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2022 by Tarkenton Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved | Terms | Privacy