Regardless of whether you’re new to the world of social media management or an experienced online community manager, you know that social media management is far from an easy job.

Being a great social media manager often means lots of effort and longer hours than you had expected. For entrepreneurs with already limited time, this can be a major problem. Thankfully, there are some great tools and strategies out there – many of them free – which can help you out.

Here’s are 5 tips that can make social media management a little easier.

1. What’s Your Social Media Strategy?

As with everything related to sales and marketing, you should always have a strategy. What you hope to accomplish and how you plan to achieve it will help you set the parameters for the work that lies ahead. When it comes to managing social media for a business, you need to create a detailed map and navigate your initiatives accordingly.

2. Content Calendar

This is your map of all your ideas and you should be following it closely. It will help you stay organized and keep you on top of all the different channels you may be looking after. Use a traditional calendar or an Excel spreadsheet to map out all the types of posts you want to make, on what channel, and when. Ideally, this will keep you posting regularly on all your social media platforms for all the targets in your strategy.

3. HootSuite

If you’re already on it, great! If not, HootSuite is a social media management system that allows users to preschedule posts, shorten links, and utilize basic analytics to see how well they’re doing. It will save you having to manually update your accounts at various times throughout the day, and can help you prepare for weekends and holidays when you still want to be active. There is a free and paid version depending on the amount you’re willing to allocate to the tool. We made the leap from Tweetdeck to HootSuite a year ago and haven’t looked back.

4. Twitter Lists

Twitter is one of the most commonly used social media platforms, whether you’re a B2B or B2C business. You’re likely following many great accounts that relate to your industry (at least you should be) that can provide you with great content. If you haven’t already, organize these accounts into groups and create lists for them. The next time you’re searching for new content on something in your industry, it will already be there and easy to find.

5. A Clipping Service

Lastly, the web is full of great content. It’s finding that content that can become a great and time consuming challenge. This is where a clipping service can come into play. It will provide you with all the relevant information that fits a defined category of keywords. Three services come to mind: Google Alerts, TrendSpottr and Mention. These clipping services will automatically email you content that fits your criteria so you’re always in the loop. They can also act as a great tool for media monitoring!

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you solve your social media management challenges, contact us. Otherwise, feel free to subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on twitter @vapartners for more helpful social media and marketing tips!