Tips for Social Media Managers [Improve Your Productivity]

Most social media managers struggle with time management. Working from home has its benefits, but if you’re not careful, you’ll end up drowning in work. In this post, I want to share 3 productivity tips to help you get organized as a social media manager.

Tips for social media managers to improve productivity

First, I suggest you map out your tasks in a monthly calendar like this:

Use a monthly calendar

Make sure you allocate time for:

1. Research (1 - 2 days)
2. Content creation (10  - 14 days) 
3. Scheduling content (1 - 2 days)
4. Generating reports (1 - 2 days)
5. Sending invoices & other CEO tasks (1 - 2 days)
6. Business development (3 - 5 days)
7. Client calls (1 - 2 days)

Additional: Client reviews, amendments & ad-hoc tasks 

Automate as many tasks as you can

Here are some tasks that you can automate to help you save time:

• Client management - use Trello, monday.com or Asana
• Invoices - send automated invoices using Paypal
• Email marketing - use Mailchimp to schedule your email campaigns 
• Time tracking - Use tools like Timing app to help you accurately bill time
• Image editing - bulk edit your photos with Lightroom
• Content creation - turn any template into a branded post in Canva
• Content scheduling - schedule your monthly content in batches using Pallyy or Buffer
• Captions - create caption templates
• Engagement - spend 30 min a day leaving Instagram comments
• Hashtags - save your hashtags into groups
• Analytics reports - send monthly Instagram analytics reports to your clients via email 

Develop a system for creating content

A strong content creation system will help you save time.

Step 1: Generate a list of topics 

Develop a list of ideas based on target audience keywords. Here’s a list of keyword tools:

• Answer the public
• Ubersuggest 
• Buzzsumo

Besides that, look for frequently asked questions on Twitter, Reddit as well as take a peek at your competitors.

Step 2: Create a content calendar

Create a list of all the types of content you would like to create, and how many pieces of each:

• Topic
• Format (image, video, infographic, guide)
• Frequency 
• Posting time

Step 3: Write the posts

In a worksheet (or Google Docs) write the posts, add captions (Learn to write captions) and keywords. In a content editor like Canva create visual graphics and quotes. 

Step 4: Preview and schedule

Preview your posts to see how they’d look on your feed and format your captions.

PS: Make sure you double-check the time (AM/PM) 

Step 5: Monitor and improve

Don’t forget to track your insights and learn which posts are performing well. 

Good content comes from listening. Hope you find these 3 productivity tips for social media managers useful!

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