15 Easy Marketing Tips that will Save You Hours of Time
How to Save Time on Your Content Marketing for Your Small Business
Whenever I ask small business owners what their biggest struggle is with making content and marketing their business, the number one answer is always TIME. There’s so much to think about when you run a business, especially if you work by yourself, so it’s totally understandable that marketing often is the first thing to slip down the to-do list.
How much time should you spend marketing your business?
Marketing is obviously a very important piece of the indie biz puzzle though, so making time for it is essential if you want your business to grow. How much time you need is totally dependant on you, your skills, your niche and your life situation. Some classic business proverbs say you should spend 20% of your time creating, and 80% of your time promoting, some say a 50/50 split is more reasonable. But what about when it’s just you wearing ALL the hats in your business, and trying to have a life as well?
Well regardless of how much precious time you have to give to your marketing efforts, hopefully some of these tips will help you use it more wisely, and get more bang for your buck with the hours you spend.
Plan Your Content in Advance
I can almost hear your eye roll through the screen, but content planning really does help. A lot of time can be wasted in indecision, and its much harder to come up with ideas when you’re constantly winging it all the time. There are loads of different ways of planning your content, and it’s worth experimenting with a few techniques to see what works best for your brain. On the podcast I cohost, The Business Proposal, we have lots of episodes on this topic which might be helpful to you:
Whether you use a paper calendar, a notebook, or a digital option like google sheets or Trello, plotting out your content ideas into a rough content calendar works wonders for your marketing productivity.
2. Try Social Media Schedulers
If you’re going to plan your content in advance, why not schedule some of it in advance as well? There are loads of options for scheduling your content, my personal favourites are Later for Instagram, and Tailwind for Pinterest. I have another blog post all about using Tailwind for your Pinterest strategy here.
It’s worth saying that you don’t have to schedule all of your content in advance. Some platforms are better suited to scheduling than others, for example on Pinterest you’re not penalised for using a scheduler like Tailwind at all, whereas some users of Instagram report that their scheduled posts get less engagement. I personally like to schedule my pins for Pinterest in advance, post organically in the moment on Instagram, and I do a bit of both in my Facebook group. Find what works for you and give it a go.
3. Cross-Pollinate Your Content Across Platforms
Now in an ideal world we would all be creating specifically optimised content for each platform rather than just auto-publishing from one to the other, but there are limited hours in a day. I wouldn’t do this for every platform, but for some social media it can be beneficial to automatically push posts out to other platforms - better than posting nothing right? An example of where I do this is from Instagram to my Facebook business page, somewhere I would be unlikely to be showing up regularly anyway.
4. Repurpose Your Content in Different Formats
This definitely earns you pro marketing points, and this is one of my favourite ways to save time in my business. Say I have one blog post (like this one), I will share this in multiple different ways, many many times across all of my platforms. I’ll create multiple pin templates to post on Pinterest (see this blog post for more tips on that), I’ll share it on Instagram (across feed, stories and reels, in different forms). I’ll share an excerpt to my email list, and I could also make the same topic into a podcast episode or a live in my facebook group.
Part of what takes time with marketing is coming up with ideas all the time, but from one idea you can create hundreds of different posts, and that’s not an exaggeration. So many of us create something for our brands, share it once and then never share it again. This method makes sure that you’re squeezing every last drop of value from your brilliant ideas.
5. Don’t be Afraid to Repeat Yourself
This tip is very apt after the last, but it’s definitely something that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with in terms of marketing. It’s so easy to forget that very few (if any) people in our audience see and digest every single piece of content we put out on the internet. So this means that it’s not only ok to repeat yourself often, it’s actually essential to get your message across. Even if you feel like you’ve said the same thing over and over again and people must be getting sick of you, it’s likely still not enough. The good thing about this is that we don’t have to come up with as many new ideas as we think we do.
6. Batch Your Work
Could you try theming your days so that you do similar tasks in a batch instead of flitting between different tasks every day? For example, I schedule all my Pinterest content on a Sunday in front of a cosy film, I write my facebook posts on a Monday morning, and I set aside Thursday afternoon to batch some Reels. Your batching doesn’t have to be weekly, for example you could set aside one day a month to take photos for your Instagram, or dedicate one day a quarter to plan out all the blog posts you want to write. Try different techniques and see what works best for you. More on batching tasks in this podcast episode.
7. Dictate Your Text if You Find Writing Captions or Blogs Challenging
This has helped me a lot in the past, as writing doesn’t come as naturally to me as explaining things verbally. If I’ve filmed a video for a workshop or IGTV, I will run that video through a transcription service like Otter.ai, and then adjust it slightly and post it as a blog post. Another way you could do this is by using the dictation app on your phone and literally speak what you want to write into it. Game changer!
8. Don’t Lose Time Typing Out Hashtags for Every Post
Create a hashtag bank on your notes app on your phone, or somewhere like Trello, so that you can copy and paste them every time you need them. Something to speed this up even more is setting up keyword shortcuts on your phone, where you can type in a code word and it automatically pastes in your hashtags for you. All of these tiny tasks mount up over time.
9. Use Templates
If designing the graphics for your content is what takes you the most time, try using templates on programmes like Canva. You can customise them completely to make them your own, but the design process takes a fraction of the time, and they still look really professional. I also really love the app Template for instagram, you can use it for stories, feed posts and gallery posts.
10. Learn Strategies from Trusted Sources
There is so much free information out the on the internet on any marketing strategy you want to use, but the problem with trying to figure it all out on your own from Google, is that it takes a lot more time, and there’s a lot of mis-information out there. You could end up wasting time and energy, when actually investing in learning the right strategy from the beginning will get you a return on that investment much quicker.
11. Outsource the Stuff You’re Not Good At
Most of us start out in business doing everything ourselves, but when you feel ready to outsource some tasks it really is the best way to free up some of your own precious time. Think about the gaps in your knowledge, the tasks that take you a long time, but might take someone else half the time. It could be that you invest in having some blog posts written for you, or you work with a VA for a few hours a week to handle your social media scheduling.
12. Let Go of Perfectionism
Often what sucks up the most time with creating content is waiting until it’s absolutely perfect before you publish it. As soon as you let go of perfect in favour of good enough, you’ll free up so much time, and it’s likely that other people will think it’s better than “good enough”. Starting before you’re ready is my favourite piece of business advice, and it definitely applies to marketing your business too.
13. Skill Swap with a Business Pal
Some of my best business experiences have been skill swaps. Maybe you find styling your photos really fun and easy, but you have a pal that finds photos a challenge and writing is more their thing. Could you team up a swap skills to help each other out? Another fun way of doing this is to share a shoot day, so if you have product businesses that compliment each other, could you book a photographer together for a day, and use each other’s products as complimentary props in the photos? Lots of options here for service based businesses too, where you can exchange expertise with each other for the benefit of both of you.
14. Find a Content Schedule that Works for You, and Stick to a Routine.
It doesn’t matter how many times you want to blog, or post to social media or Pinterest, if you can’t keep it up consistently. Work out which platforms will get you the best long term results and focus on those, don’t worry about being EVERYWHERE. It’s much better to aim slightly lower with your content frequencies, and then do more if you have time, than to set unrealistic expectations and keep disappointing yourself (nobody enjoys that!).
15. Be Kind to Yourself
Most people struggle with time management, and when you’re a small business owner, your to-do list is never done, there’s always more you could be doing. So make sure you allow yourself time to rest, and time to have fun too. Burning out doesn’t help anyone, and definitely doesn’t help your future productivity. So do what you can, and be compassionate with yourself along the way. You’re exactly where you need to be.
I hope that was useful for you! If you want more tips on content creation and how to have more fun with your marketing, check out my workshop The Content Energiser, available for instant download here.
