Be Social in Less Time

Love it or hate it, a strong social media presence is becoming a critical part of successful entrepreneurship. Though it’s “free advertising,” social media can be a time suck from which you never emerge. Here are a few tips to get the most out of the time you spend on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

1. Know where to focus. If you have tons of beautiful food photos, Pinterest and Instagram may be the best place to spend the most time. If you love sharing articles and other quick tips, Twitter is great. Facebook is a wonderful platform to interact with colleagues and local customers on a personal level, though the algorithms make it difficult for your Facebook business page posts to be seen by most of your followers.

2. Use Facebook groups for awesome sharable content. If you like to share great blogs and recipes and help fellow RDNs at the same time, Facebook groups will save you tons of time. By simply joining and participating in a few groups, you will have access to constantly updated content you can schedule for sharing at your leisure. The big bonus is that other people will share your posts as well. Check out Dietitians on the Blog, Dietitians Do Science on the Blog, The Recipe Redux, Bloggers Gonna Blog (not primarily RDs) and more.

3. Use scheduling programs to save time. Some are free, some are not, but scheduling tools are fantastic. By entering posts for Facebook, Twitter or Instagram on Hootsuite (for free), you can use their auto-schedule tool which determines the time the content should post. Others options are Buffer, CoSchedule, Klout, or Meet Edgar. Tailwind, Ahology or BoardBooster are all options for Pinterest. Research pricing and features to determine which will work for your business.

4. Use Google Analytics to determine where your referral traffic is coming from. This is incredibly important info to help you decide where to devote time and energy. If most of your visitors come from one or two sources, those are the places you may want to concentrate on developing more of a presence.

5. Set a timer! If you are like me, once you start, you may develop shiny object syndrome and suffer from the constant distraction of social media. You don’t need to check Facebook every time your phone dings, it will still be there. Allow yourself a certain amount of time per day to schedule posts and check out those of others. It’s helpful to use info collected by social media pros to determine the optimal times for sharing. When your time is up, it’s over, step away! Twitter will survive without you for a while.

Lauren Harris-Pincus, MS, RDN
NE Nominating Committee 2015-2016