How to be more time effective with your internal automation?

Great marketing doesn’t have to take huge amounts of your time. When you know what works and doesn’t, you can streamline your efforts and make more of an impact.

Much of your written content can be repurposed across different platforms, from social media to email marketing. This saves you the time and energy you can put into other tasks.

We have all been taught that success comes from the hustle. But in truth, working smarter takes you further than working harder. And a little creativity can go a long way.

Here are 5 creative time-saving hacks for your digital marketing.

1. Repurpose across social platforms

Something you may not realise is that nobody is seeing everything you post.

Business owners often feel that they have to keep coming up with something new to post. But in truth, and largely due to social media algorithms, people aren’t seeing your posts often enough.

So you can very safely reuse some posts on the same platform. And, of course, it saves a lot of time if you copy and paste from one platform to the other.

So post on LinkedIn, then copy and paste that same text into Facebook. This will work well on Instagram, too – make sure you have a square image for that post.

The point here is to give yourself a break. Use your creativity to write one interesting post, and then reuse it to make it go further.

2. Schedule smarter on social

One place where you can safely share the same marketing material repeatedly is on Twitter. Algorithms don’t work in the same way here as on other platforms. Twitter is still a fast-flowing stream of content that comes out in real-time.

What this means for you is that you can post the same things repeatedly without spamming your followers. Very few people will see your posts; you blink, and they are gone.

You can use a tool like Social Jukebox to create a stock of ready-made Tweets, all linking to your marketing material. Using short snippets of text paired with an eye-catching image. Then you can link to landing pages, blog posts, or videos, for example.

Set your ‘Jukebox’ (set of ready-made Tweets) to keep posting daily. If you leave this running for a while, you will begin to see your ReTweets and link clicks growing.

This is especially true if you use humour in your digital marketing. Funny Tweets do very well for getting followers and shares.  Check out some examples here.

3. Create your brand kit with free online tools

Have you got your branding sorted? Once your logo, brand colours, fonts and header images are designed, you can add them to templates, so all your digital assets are ready to go.

For example, you could design your logo with a free tool like logo.com, then upload it to canva.com and use it in various templates. You can set these templates up with your choice of brand colours and fonts.

This includes graphics for your social media posts, email marketing, and thumbnails for any video marketing you produce. Now you can create endless versions of all these digital assets in a very short time. 

4. Make your email marketing visual and fun

How much time are you spending on creating your email marketing content? Keeping your email newsletters brief, light, and fun will save time and keep your readers more engaged.

We are taught to believe that more means better. But actually, most people are time-poor and want a quick read. So don’t spend time writing long emails that people won’t read anyway.

Try a fun approach. Have a theme like #FunFactFriday or embed your latest Instagram images into the email. Smile at people when they open your email, and they will want to keep opening them.

Need some inspiration? Check out Sumo’s list of 30 brilliant email marketing examples. They all have in common that they are succinct, visual and friendly.

5. Batch your content creation

This last tip is more of a ‘how’ than a ‘what’. One of the reasons that small business owners spend so much time on digital marketing is that they procrastinate on creating content.

Try being stricter with yourself and take a time-blocking approach to your marketing. Set aside 2-3 hour time blocks per week, and focus. Don’t look at your phone, don’t answer emails, and don’t pop out for a coffee.

Creating batches of content, perhaps by following a content calendar you planned earlier, can help with that focus. Set yourself a target, such as setting up one ad campaign or writing and scheduling one month’s worth of marketing emails. Then sit down and create.

When you can get yourself to focus, you can get much more done in less time. And it feels fantastic to check some work off your list.

If you can sit still for long enough, you might even find yourself in that revered creative flow state, where productivity happens for you. Please give it a go.

Saving time doesn’t have to mean producing less marketing content. It can just mean approaching how you create that content more flexibly. Allow yourself to reuse content across different platforms. Remember that none of your audience will see all of your posts anyway.

Bringing a little fun to your digital marketing content will make it more enjoyable for you and your audience. So don’t be afraid to use a little humour where appropriate.

And, of course, create your marketing content in batches whenever possible, when you can get your head down and focus, the workflows and gets finished faster.