How to manage multiple social media accounts (with less stress!)
Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest…did I get them all? If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur, it’s likely that you’re on some form of social media. Nowadays, social media is one of the best ways to gain exposure to new leads and build brand loyalty. It gives you access to a targeted demographic and can help present your business in a streamlined and cohesive manner.
But, with all these social media accounts to manage, plus additional content marketing strategies, on top of running your actual business, it can be a lot. The last thing you want to do is spend all of your time managing these social accounts and adding unnecessary stress to your life.
So, if social media marketing is a necessary part of your overall business strategy and you know that you need to manage multiple social media accounts, here are a few of our tips and tricks to do so without losing your mind.
1. Think before setting up multiple accounts
First things first, it’s important to be selective about which social media platforms you want to have a presence on. If you open an account for every single platform, you run the risk of spreading yourself too thin.
Ask yourself important questions like:
What is my business’s target demographic and what platforms are they most likely to be on?
What media format best supports my business and which platforms are best for that type of content?
How important is link sharing to my overall business strategy? Do I need to prioritize a social media platform that makes sharing links accessible?
We recommend no more than 3 or 4 social media platforms to begin with. If you’re outsourcing to a marketing agency or already have a good handle on managing multiple social media accounts, then feel free to expand to more. Just remember that this is a business decision and sometimes the ROI isn't worth it. It's better to do 1-2 platforms really well, than lots half-heartedly.
2. Get clear on your social strategy
At the core of social media marketing is social strategy. To manage multiple social media accounts effectively, you have to have a clear vision of your overall content strategy and the role that each platform has in promoting your business.
Reflect on these points to get started:
What are your content pillars?
Brainstorm 3-5 topics to create content around. These topics should pertain directly to what you’re selling or add value and build trust with your audience in some way.
How to create content that converts visitors into loyal customers
What’s your overall social media marketing plan going in?
Are you going to create different content pieces for each platform or will you simply be reposting across accounts? We strongly recommend the latter, different people are on different platforms so not only is it important to post the same content over your multiple platforms so that everyone actually sees it, it's also a huge time saver.
Establish a content creation workflow plan that works for you.
Brainstorm topics ahead of time, batch all the content, and then schedule it out in a consistent manner. This should be streamlined to work specifically for your business.
Plan to plan: What content will you create every month? When will you create the content? What exactly do you need to create every month?
3. Leverage technology to your advantage
The most incredible thing about social media marketing is just how much you can automate with software. Whether it’s the actual scheduling and posting of your content, or managing customer service, technology can be a big time saver and stress reducer.
Here are some specific ways that we’ve simplified our with technology:
Use a platform like Creator Studio, Later or Hootsuite (among many others!) to combine all your social platforms into one space. This keeps your accounts organized in one dashboard so that it’s easy to understand and track at a glance. You’ll feel less disheveled and more secure about managing multiple social media accounts.
Use auto-posting to schedule out all posts beforehand. This pertains to main social media posts and any additional content pieces (like stories).
Automate your customer service. Put an FAQ and messaging autoresponder in place. That way, your community feels heard and cared for, but you can respond to these inquiries at a time that works best for you.
Track performance and analytics with technology. Use data to dictate your content strategy so that you’re always optimizing.
4. Set an engagement schedule
All social media accounts require engagement. Whether that’s actively commenting on others’ posts to grow your community or managing comments on your own posts, engaging with your audience on social media is a key part to successfully managing multiple social media accounts.
One trick that we've found helpful is to literally schedule out time to engage. Rather than checking messages and comments here and there, block off time for each account specifically to respond to comments and shares.
5. Set a cross-posting schedule
If your overall social media marketing strategy includes posting to multiple platforms, then you need to make sure that this is done in a cohesive manner. You also need to make sure that you get it out of your brain and into a system (because there's no way you can remember what is supposed to be posted where and when, on top of everything else you have to do). Organize all content pieces and projects in a project management system (we LOVE Clickup for this!) to ensure that they're scheduled and posted at the right times.
6. Use templates for social media design
Save time on the actual content design portion for your multiple social media accounts by using templates.
Having a specific template for graphics and gifs with your branding helps build brand recognition and saves time on content creation. If you're using something like Canva to design your graphics, you can simply resize them so that they're appropriate for whatever platform you're posting on.
If you're looking to save time on designing and are interested in templates, check out our social media templates for Canva! You can also find more great social media templates on Creative Market.
7. When in doubt, hire out
At some point, you’ll probably want to step away from managing your own social media accounts. Outsourcing your marketing efforts to an agency or an in-house specialist will free up your time to focus on other aspects of your business.
We're all for DIY, but at a certain point, it's great to be able to outsource! Especially if you find yourself doing more social media marketing than anything else - you didn't get into business to be a social media marketer, right?? (Unless you did! 😉)
Managing multiple social media accounts is a lot of work, but having a clear social media marketing strategy and effectively using technology to your advantage will help you to keep track of what's going on with all your social media accounts in an effortless way.
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