Did you know that LinkedIn has more than 225 million users around the globe? While it’s true that LinkedIn is the place to find a job and to make professional connections, many business owners are finding that their social media marketing efforts on LinkedIn are paying off. In fact, according to research by Wishpond, a social media marketing applications company, 77% of LinkedIn members research products and services on the site and 60% of users have clicked on ads.
Yet with all of your other social media marketing efforts, plans, and goals it can be tricky to find time for yet another site. And as you well know, it’s important to give any new strategy your full attention. So how do you find time for LinkedIn?
#1 Assess Where You Can Cut Back
If you simply do not have time for any more social media marketing consider your existing efforts. Are they all working for you? What do your analytics say? Is Facebook still effective? Is Twitter bringing in the visitors and generating sales? If there is room to cut back on those tactics, you then have a little wiggle room to add LinkedIn into your daily or weekly social media marketing efforts.
#2 Outsource Social Media
Instead of spending all of your time on social media, consider hiring a social media manager or a virtual assistant that can interact on your behalf. They can take care of the time consuming portion of social media, and you can stick to the planning and strategizing.
#3 Outsource Administration
Additionally, you might want to consider outsourcing other areas of your business to make more time for social media. This is effective if you enjoy social media marketing and you’re good at it. For example, if you don’t have time to focus on more social media activities because you’re too busy managing customer service you can outsource customer service to make time for social media.
#4 Plan and Organize
One of the reasons social media, including time on LinkedIn, consumes so much time is that many people approach it without a schedule or a plan. To make the most of your time on any social site and to save time, create goals, a strategy, and an action plan. For example, you might decide that you’re going to post once a day on Facebook and every other day on LinkedIn.
Decide what you’re going to post in advance and how it’s going to promote your business. Set limits for yourself on each site. It only takes a few minutes to post on any particular site and a few minutes to interact. If you have a plan and 30 minutes a day you can take care of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
#5 Capitalize on What Works and Let Go of the Rest
There are of course many activities you can engage on in any given social site. Pay attention to your efforts and their results. Any activity that isn’t generating results should be tweaked or released.
Ultimately there is only so much time in a day. Spend your time on tactics that are effective and enjoyable. Make room to try LinkedIn. You may be surprised how many different ways this website can send traffic and profits to your business.