I love this question because it says that an entrepreneur is thinking about the ROI (return on investment).  As entrepreneurs, we want to get the biggest bang for our buck.  We want to put in minimal effort and get the best results no matter what we are using to grow our business.

With social media, it is not about being lazy, it is about getting caught in the black hole that sucks your time away from running your business.  Social media is purposely set up to trigger your brain into spending more time on it.  With ‘rewards’ and quick responses, we may feel like we are doing something on social media, then find we have spent an hour and nothing was accomplished.

I want to remind you that social media is about strategy.  You must start with a good strategy and you must understand your ideal customer.  If you understand you ideal customer, then you can find out when they post and be online when they are online.

Below is a simple three step process to make sure you have just the right postings at just the right time for maximum impact.

Basic Times for posting

First thing you want to do is set up a basic posting schedule.  You can use tools like Hootesuite or Buffer to schedule your posts.  Both of these have a free version.  You want to schedule 3 posts a day at the ‘typical’ times to get started.  Post once in the morning around 7 or 8am.  Once at noon.  Once around 6pm or 9pm, based on what you feel works best for your audience.

We want to post at times that people are most likely to be online.  People generally check their social media when they start their day, when they eat lunch, when they get off work and sometimes before they go to bed.

Mix up the days

Next, you want to post at different times on different days.  Start with the basic times: morning, noon, after work, and night.  Then rotate which day of the week you post and what time you post.  You are doing this to see what times your postings get the most results and on which days people are more likely to respond to your postings.

For example, on Monday you post at 6pm and 9pm.  ON Tuesday you post at noon and 9pm.  On Wednesday you post at 8am and noon.  Etc…Then, the next week, you change the times and days.  Do this for a month and watch which of your posts are getting the best attention.  You can even try odd times on certain days, like 3pm on Thursdays.

Track your progress

You can usually track your progress within each social media platform.  Most of them have some sort of tracking tools in their system.  If you try Buffer, it will track and it will automatically choose the best times for your audience.  If you use Hootesuite, you can select to have your posts automatically posted at the best times for your audience.  Whichever of these you use, you want to give some time to have some times to track, so make sure you post for a few weeks before turning on automatic functions.

Based on your times of postings and which day works best for those postings, you can set up a social media schedule each week. Post relevant information only at the times that are giving you the best results.  By doing this, you will get maximum results for your social media efforts.

Social media posting must be strategic if you want it to be effective. Click To Tweet

Conclusion

Social media works great for businesses, but you must be strategic.  Take time to learn which social media channels work for your customers and which times work best for them.  Then, you can set up a schedule using free online resources.  Each week you collect interesting things as you browse.  Then, once a week you take that collection and schedule it for the week . . or month!