Hootsuite, the social media management tool, has some thoughts on how to run the various accounts that small businesses find themselves juggling, and how to do it all in under 30 minutes.  

If cramming what normally takes people 3 hours into 20 minutes sounds like a monumental task, what really needs to be done is to first analyze your current schedule.  Which do you visit first, or most?  Do you perform the same actions across different platforms, or have separate routines for each one?  If there are any steps that are extraneous or unnecessary, remove them.

The next order of business is to figure out which platforms themselves are most necessary, and which end up ultimately wasting your time?  

Here’s Hootsuite’s formula for successful and time-efficient social media management:

The First 6 Minutes- Browse and Engage

Interaction with fans and followers is highly important to any business, small or large.  A study shows that 9 out of 10 customers wish they had meaningful interaction with all brands on social media, but finding the time can be hard for most companies.  

4 Minutes: Monitor

Once you’ve responded where needed, just take a bit to monitor what’s going on in the network sphere in general. Trending topics, news, etc.

3 Minutes: Post

Use this to post quick, short messages as necessary, that is, aside from your regular scheduled content.  Things like relevant headlines or stories are best for this sort of thing.  

2 Minutes: Analyze

Use an application to store and analyze your data, so you can stay on top of what content is most useful on which platform.

3 Minutes: Schedule

Use the last bit of your plan to schedule content for the next day or even week, to ensure that there are no gaps in your content or missed stories.

Via Hootsuite.