Schedule and Share
After you’ve gotten your virtual content library together and have scanned the latest updates, now’s the time to schedule and share that content you’ve either curated or created yourself with your online community.
Making small investments to build and maintain a consistent social presence doesn’t mean you have to spend 24 hours a day connected to a device.
No time to manually Tweet or Facebook key updates?
Thankfully there are apps for that. A few of my favorites are Buffer and Hootsuite. These free social media management tools allow you to share your content across all your major social platforms (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) – in one place, in advance, on your own schedule and even while you’re asleep.
In addition to allowing you to schedule and queue updates, some great things about Buffer are the app also suggests great content for you to share  from a variety of topics (taking much of the guesswork out). The app also provides analytics, letting you know how your status updates and content sharing are working.
Hootsuite is great because the dashboard allows you to access the various feeds and streams from your social channels without having to manually log into each of them to see what other folks are updating. And just like Buffer, Hootsuite provides analytics and insights into how your updates are faring across social media.
But don’t just solely rely on automated social updates to build a consistent social presence for your business. Although it’s helpful, it’s important to take some time each day to do what I like to call “social listening”: responding to feedback and social mentions, and being there to share content right when it’s relevant. Carving out even just 30 minutes a day to do this will, without a doubt, render you more ROI by helping you nurture more relationships.
Social media will no longer be an overwhelming rabbit hole  if you use these tips and tools, which ultimately will help increase others’ awareness of your business, help you build a quality following and allow you to turn more leads into customers.
Courtney Herring is the founder of The Champ Media Agency and a consulting entreproducer dedicated to helping time-starved entrepreneurs execute their content strategy to nurture inspired and engaged online communities by taking the headache out of editing, social media, and Web content maintenance, allowing clients to be successful in other pursuits. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.