4 Life Hacks for the Social Media Army of One
By: Sophie Maerowitz
April 5, 2018
Are you solely responsible for managing the social media activities (and more) at your brand? Take heart—you’re not alone in being alone.
Even some of the world’s largest corporations and household-name brands run their social media operations on a shoestring budget, which often translates to a skeleton crew. And if you’re charged with juggling all of your brand’s social media activities, it’s crucial to find strategies that allow you to knock out your intimidating to-do list as you fly solo.
Skye Estroff, marketing and media manager at Atlanta’s premier food festival Taste of Atlanta, oversees all her brand’s social activities and employs several tactics to ensure she can stay on top of all of her company’s channels. Estroff, who will be speaking at the Social Shake-Up in Atlanta May 7-9, shares four life hacks for the social media army of one below:
Skye Estroff, Marketing & Media Manager, Taste of Atlanta
Front-load time-consuming content, then repurpose it. Estroff says solo social media practitioners should dedicate a large swath of time to one high-quality piece of content as opposed to individually planning discrete content for each channel. “If you take an hour to write a great blog post, use a portion of it on Twitter or Facebook in order to make the most of that time and reach as many people as possible,” Estroff advises.
Get organized. Before she starts a project or campaign, Estroff makes ample use of social media calendars and post scheduling apps (she likes Hootsuite). “I use an online spreadsheet for my general marketing calendar and highlight all of the important dates such as contests, events and giveaways in one place.” She aims to have all social media posts scheduled a month in advance.
Tailor content to individual channels. Estroff makes subtle changes to photos posted across multiple channels to ensure they have the highest chance of performing well. “The photo that you use on a blog post may be large and glossy, but when you post it to Facebook or Twitter, tone down the professional finish so it doesn’t look like a stock photo,” she says.
Go analog and handwrite high-priority tasks. Making sure that everything is physically written down helps Estroff ensure that important tasks don’t get buried in her email inbox. “Along with plugging dates into my online calendar, I handwrite them into a physical agenda and use eye-catching stickers so I’m drawn to look at it regularly,” Estroff says. Science is on Estroff’s side—a 2016 study published in the Wall Street Journal found that students who take notes by hand outperform those who do so digitally.
Follow Skye: @TweetForTheSkye
Follow Sophie: @SophieMaerowitz
