One way to spend more time doing what you love is to delegate or automate your weekly marketing tasks. Think about all the content you create and ways you promote your business, both online and offline. Do you really have the time or desire to do ALL these tasks yourself?
Here are a few ideas for what marketing tasks you can delegate and what you can automate.
Social media is a never-ending task, but you have the benefit of being able to use both automation AND delegation. After perfecting your system, you can turn your social media marketing into a well-oiled machine.
How to Automate Your Social Media Marketing
- Scheduling and sharing posts. Don’t waste time scheduling your own posts! Use the social media automation tools available. Some of the most popular tools are MeetEdgar, Buffer, and Sprout Social. Most programs will allow you to schedule content and set the time and day you’d like to post it–so you can spend your time on other tasks.
- Posting on multiple platforms. Instead of duplicating your posting efforts across multiple platforms, try using a tool like Zapier or IFFT to “connect” social media apps so that when you post to Facebook, for example, it also posts to Instagram or vice versa.
- In app tools. If you’re primarily on Facebook, utilize its scheduling tool to post to your business page and groups. Have your VA schedule your posts right inside Facebook (Facebook favors this built-in tool).
How to Delegate Your Social Media:
- Content writing. Someone dreams up all those posts, right? A content writer can punch out social content quicker than most social users, which allows you time to coach your clients or prepare your next training course.
- Research hashtags. Hashtags are important on Instagram and can be used on other platforms. This is a quick way that people can find you on each platform so each one needs careful consideration. Knowledgeable VAs or social media experts will know how to brainstorm and research hashtags that yield results.
- Formatting and finding graphics for each social post can be a time sucker when you’re thinking of all the other tasks you’d rather be doing. Find a VA who enjoys this type of work and who can do it quickly yet efficiently.
- Scheduling your posts with an automation tool. Have your VA put the content into your social media scheduler once you’ve approved the posts.
- Repurpose old content from one platform to another. Your VA or content writer can easily transform a YouTube video into a series of IG story quotes or can be transcribed into a blog post. Likewise, a blog post can be broken apart and made into videos or social quotes.
If you’re not blogging regularly, you’re wasting precious time NOT educating your audience. They won’t learn about what you offer without you telling them and a blog is the easiest way to publish new content regularly with the goal of people discovering your business.
How You Can Delegate your Blogging Tasks:
- Writing posts
- Creating catchy titles for posts
- Formatting posts
- Sourcing, creating, and inserting graphics
- SEO research
- Repurposing blog posts (i.e. turn a blog post into a series of 3-5 Instagram posts)
- Scheduling to publish
- Sharing posts via social media scheduler or turning a blog post into an email
If video marketing is a top priority, delegating these tasks will certainly save time if you find a video expert. You also are not tasked with learning new technology, which can be a time sucker for entrepreneurs who want to focus on people instead of technology.
Video Marketing Tasks You Can Delegate:
- Video editing
- Create a video intro or bumper you use on each video
- Publish videos to your platform, such as YouTube or other social channels
- SEO keyword research
- Thumbnail creation
- Graphics in videos
- Video transcription
Podcasting is an effective way to get your message out to more people, but you don’t have to saddle yourself with the tech worries. A podcast editor is a handy person to add to your team so all you have to do is record your episodes and then leave them in the hands of your editor.
Podcasting Tasks to Delegate to your Team or Editor:
- Edit podcast – fix mistakes, add intro music, add promos throughout, add closing
- Record a podcast intro
- Write up show notes
- Publish podcast and show notes to your website or blog
- Add the podcast to your hosting site
- Add music overlay or voiceovers
Graphics can be fun to create but unless you have that designer’s eye, it could turn into a rabbit hole of despair and wasted time. Utilize your team and some user-friendly tools to make your graphics creation a cinch.
Canva is a free, web-based platform which can streamline your graphics creation process. Choose from dozens of templates and fonts. Add your brand colors and your own templates that you can easily update for future use. More features are available in the paid version.
Graphic Templates that You Can Easily Delegate:
- Blog post template
- Instagram Story template
- Instagram post quote template
- Pinterest graphic template
- YouTube graphic template
- Email marketing template, such as your weekly newsletter header image or a whole newsletter template
With your set of graphic templates on hand, creating new graphics on a weekly or monthly basis becomes MUCH easier, especially when you delegate it to your VA.
Other Marketing Tasks You Can Delegate
Jumping back to social media for a moment, do you really want to stay glued to it for 18 hours a day, waiting and hoping for followers to engage in a conversation? Instead of trying to focus on work with your notifications going off, try delegating your Facebook Page and/or Group Management to an expert or to your VA.
Giving administrative access to your VA allows them to write posts or schedule recurring posts. They can also create a social media calendar where they can cross promote between your business page and your groups and even cross promote across platforms simply by referencing your social calendar.
Repurposing content across any platform is something your VA can coordinate along with your content writer. Take that blog post and have your team turn it into a video series or social quotes. Upload those videos to YouTube and then promote your new video series. Use that video series topic as episode ideas for your podcast. Your team can take any piece of content and create at least a dozen different formats, all of which are perfect for cross promoting on your social networks.
If you used even one of these examples of delegation and automation, how much time do you think you’d add to your day? So, what’s holding you back from delegating?
Learn some automation shortcuts that can help streamline your administrative business tasks in my book, Systems are Sexy! 7 Steps to Harness the Power of Automation and a Team To Create Your Dream Business.
