"How do you achieve as much as possible with social media without spending too much time on it?", I get that question very often and it's a good one. Because social media not only costs time, it consumes almost all your time if you are not paying attention. As a webshop entrepreneur you spend a lot of hours behind your computer and then the danger is very great that you will be distracted. When you update your Facebook page you see a friend's birthday, you congratulate her and click on some photos, pin something nice and end up in a pin session of an hour in the context of 'getting inspiration', comment here email there. Before you know it, your morning will be gone — or your day, if you're unlucky.
That's why I give you a look behind the scenes at Happlify. I myself have been keeping online marketing in order for our companies and customers for almost 15 years and I have a number of handy tools for this. When I slip into my own old (chaotic) pattern, I pick up my daily schedule (see below) and get back into the right (time-saving) rhythm.
Weekly cost
What we do weekly (with Happlify)/advise regarding marketing:
- Blog - minimum 2 blog posts per week*
- Newsletter - 1 newsletter per week, sent on weekends
- Instagram - 1 to 2 posts every day
- Facebook - 1 to 2 posts every day
- Pinterest - a few carefully formatted posts every week for traffic
- YouTube - currently 1 video interview per month (will also be posted on SoundCloud)
My handy social media tools
Buffer
We ourselves use Buffer, an online tool to schedule your (business) social media messages. After scheduling, the messages are automatically posted at the times you set. Then you can see what these messages have done with the help of the statistics. Hootsuite is a similar service, but I prefer Buffer because I also find it more manageable. When planning the week, the blog is leading. We want as much relevant traffic as possible to our website and social media is actually only used as a sign to get that visit going in our direction. Besides Buffer , there are many nice other options such as Hootsuite , Later and Creator studio .
canvas
Canva is a graphic design platform used to create images, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content for social media. The app contains countless templates that users can use. It is relatively easy to use, is free to use. The free version contains hundreds of thousands of photos and graphics, the Pro subscription (± €10,- per month) no less than 75 million. Click here and take a look for yourself .
Creative Market
Creative Market is an online marketplace for community-generated design assets. The company sells images, WordPress themes, stock photography, and other digital goods for use by web creatives. Creative Market has over a million users and over 250,000 buyable items. We often use it for campaign design and especially the illustrations are very suitable for that. Click here and take a look for yourself .
social media
facebook
We still use Facebook, but not so intensively anymore. The content we post on the blog is divided into chunks and posted on social media. These posts all refer directly to the blog post in question.
We still use Facebook to advertise on both Facebook and Instagram. Advertising on Facebook is a world in itself, but a very interesting one. Want help advertising on Facebook? Then we recommend expert Webslagen, you will find this company here with the SYSO experts .
Instagram
Currently a favorite and for good reason, after all, a picture is worth a thousand words. There are many ways to use Instagram as a marketing tool. You can style the photos very tightly, do a lot of interesting things with video and use this to optimally support your branding. It's just a pity that the links in your description below the photos don't click through directly. That's why you often see #linkinbio or something like that, I advise you to do that too. That way you still have a 'call to action'.
💡 Do you want to get everything out of Instagram for business? Check out our Instagram course for entrepreneurs .
MailerLite
A good newsletter is key for the marketing and communication of a webshop. Your carefully constructed mailing list, unlike all social media, will always remain yours. For example, the Happy Thoughts newsletter generates more website traffic than all social media combined!
A newsletter does not always have to contain 'advertising', it is not! It is the glue between you and your customer or follower. For example, in our E-mail marketing magic course I recommend sending VIP newsletters with varied topics such as: promotion (weekly promotion, sale), image (styling tips, color combinations, style icon, etc.) and introduction (new products).
Time saving
But how do you save time now?
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Planning - by planning the use of the above resources. It's no different than that. Determine for yourself one day, part of the day or a few evenings a week on which you map out, prepare, prepare and prepare your marketing and communication for the coming week.
- Idea dump - write down the ideas and inspiration you get throughout the week in a special notebook or document. That way you don't miss anything.
- Create your own mix - find out for yourself what suits you, your company and your audience. There is no fixed recipe. Because everything is possible, it doesn't have to be everything.
💡 Therefore also read: Entrepreneur: learn to say 'no'
- Content marketing - if you really want to get started with marketing and save time in the long run, go for content marketing. I LOVE content marketing and like to teach you all the ins & outs in no time. Read more here .
