Are your eyes glassy? Do you dream in hashtags? Does a colonoscopy seem more appealing than spending time on your social media feeds? If so, you may be burning out on your law firm website social media marketing. This article will explain five simple solutions (besides the obvious choice of hiring the experts at JustLegal Marketing) to avoid burning out on social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing Will Burn You Out
For those of you who know me, you know that I engage on social media, whether through my law firm or under my name. Heck, I LOVE social media, I like the engagement, and I’ve enjoyed trying to build up my brand (my law practice). At the peak of it, I was plussing, sharing, liking, and commenting away. And then . . . I burned out . . . . At first, I felt guilty that I was starting to ignore the folks who regularly engaged with me. It had nothing to do with any of those persons. The more I felt guilty about neglecting my feeds, the more I shied away from social media. So, the cycle of feeling guilty and avoiding went on for a few months. Until now. So what can you do to prevent burnout on social media?
1) Know Your Limits
You need to know your limits. I’d like to think I have great self-control. If you’re like me, you can easily get hooked on social media and spend HOURS online. The more my engagement online grew, the less time I devoted to other things that needed my attention. I’m not saying I was a social media addict, but I hadn’t found a way to balance my time online and offline.
2) Set a Schedule for Your Law Firm’s Social Media Marketing
I now have a schedule that I follow. Of course, if there is “downtime” and I feel like messing around on social media (like right now), I do. I devote a specific amount of time on particular days to engaging on social media.
3) Focus on Core Followers & Engagers
Although it can be alluring to have a huge following and to try to engage with EVERYONE who does the same with you, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do it (unless you are outsourcing your social media management to JustLegal Marketing – hint, hint). Just like you focus your attention and energy on your core group of friends and family in the real world, consider doing the same on social media if you find you don’t have the time to devote to a large group.
4) Take Short Breaks
It’s OK to take a short break, but you will lose followers if you stay away too long. Also, many of the folks who routinely engage with you will stop because they don’t see that you are reciprocating. That’s fair, after all. Perhaps a better way is to take a break for a weekend here or every other day there. After all, if you worked hard to build up your social media presence, you may regret backsliding by going dark for weeks at a time.
5) Use a Social Media Management Tool
Of course, there is the popular service HootSuite for managing your social media feeds. I’m a fan of SEO products from LinkAssistant, so I tried their product BuzzBundle when it was still in beta, but it wasn’t ready for primetime. It seems they’ve worked out the kinks, and presently BuzzBundle does an excellent job of managing feeds including LinkedIn, Google Plus and Google Business Pages, Facebook Business Pages, and Twitter. Additionally, it has tools to measure your social media presence against your business competitors and track keywords and topics. It costs $199 plus an annual subscription of approximately $50 for updated algorithms.
