The Lazy Man’s guide to SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Are you too busy (or too lazy) to water your social media accounts?

• Do you hate social media? (Or not even on social media?)
• Do you feel guilty for not leveraging the free publicity for your brand?
• Do you get jealous of other companies having millions of fans/followers?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, then step right in my friend! I’ll show you how to a social media following in the LAZIEST way possible!

The REAL way to do social media marketing

• Blog on your site
• Post and share crap on Facebook everyday
• Share on LinkedIn if you’re a B2B company or like rapid-fire engagements with other social media people.
• Post photos on Instagram or Pinterest if you’re a visual-oriented brand (products, fashion, custom-stuff)
• Put videos up on Youtube
• Respond to comments
• Go to actual events, meet people, take pictures of people and things…then post up your videos/photos and tag all the things and people in them

UGHHHH, too much work! And nobody got time for that! So follow my advice and do it this way.

1. Create only necessary social media accounts

• Website blog – not technically a social media account but it’s used as a sharepoint.
• Facebook – great for all-around network
• LinkedIn – good for B2B businesses, also good for B2C for networking or building trust
• Twitter – good for sharing links, images, or play-by-play updates for live events
• Youtube – if you have promo or even casual videos
• Instagram – good for visual-oriented companies (fashion, custom-products/services)
• Pinterest – good for female and visual-oriented companies, share links or photos
• Email marketing service – Mailchimp, MailerLite, etc – good for reaching people directly and having something they might return to later (whereas social media content often goes stale after a week).

Pick only 1 or 2 social media channels to focus on. For me that’s mostly only Facebook for some brands, Facebook and Youtube for others, or even Facebook Youtube AND Instagram for my most important ones. I still create accounts for Twitter, etc but I don’t use them regularly.

If you want to be safe, pick only the social media networks that you actually use on a personal level. Because it’s more likely that you’ll stay engaged on them, posting stuff, hanging around to reply to fan comments.

The worst thing you can do is pick all of them. STUPID IDEA. You’ll hate yourself and those abandoned pages will only reflect poorly on your company making visitors think your company is dead. The idea of social media is a way for people to keep a pulse on where you actually hangout. If you don’t actually use social media…I probably wouldn’t even start now. I mean it. You can just close this stupid guide and call it a day!

2. Create (or gather) base content

• Blogs – write a blog post. 1k words is ideal.
• Videos – record one off your phone.
• Photos – take some photos with your phone, or save some off the internet.
• Links – get some useful links in your industry

Now some of you are gonna ask me what to post…I already know it! Look, if you wanna be lazy you gotta at least be creative.

• Write something simple, anything.
• Take a video of you goofing off at work.
• A photo of you doing some work.
• A photo of you doing whatever it is that you do.

Want to know a secret? It can be ANYTHING. Completely unrelated. Honestly, I think it’s even better sometimes to post something unrelated as it makes you look more like a real person and connect even closer with your audience than if you were to post the same mundane stuff about your niche/work.

STILL can’t come up with anything? Sheesh, just subscribe to other people’s/brand’s social media accounts and re-share their stuff! It ain’t that hard!

3. Stay as active or inactive as you want

• ideally, post once a week (but don’t hold yourself to this)
• post everyday for 2 weeks, then go cold for a whole year
• post once a month
• post only during important events
• post whenever the heck you want

Seriously. There’s no need to uphold yourself to a strict social media routine. Don’t feel bad about not posting everyday. It’s not a diet for Christ sake! (And even then, you shouldn’t feel bad about that either!)

Do what is natural. Do what is fun! Don’t worry about the right times or the right days to post. All that shit is for people who actually have too much stuff to post that they don’t know when and where to put it. If you’re a lazy ass (like me), that ain’t your problem. You need to release that brain fart as soon as you feel it!

4. Have fun on social media

I think this is so underrated. There are way too many “professional” posts on social media. And I’m sorry but they all look like freaken advertisements. Nobody cares about that sh*t. It’s not fun to look at. Just looks like the same “BUY ME. TRUST ME. BUY ME. TRUST ME.” crap over and over.

Here. I’ll let you decide. Tell me which posting schedule feels more fun to follow to you. We’ll pretend this is for a freelance web designer/business.

“PRO” formula:

• MONDAY – blog post “Why good web design is so important” (all detailed and shit)
• TUESDAY – nothing because somebody told you not to post everyday.
• WEDNESDAY – photo of color and emotional association chart.
• THURSDAY – saw a cool photo but gonna save it to share next week.
• FRIDAY – re-share of some video comparing “Best laptops for web designers”.
• THE WEEK AFTER – same crap but slightly different.

“HUMAN” formula :

• MONDAY – nothing, because you’re still recovering from Sunday.
• TUESDAY – blog post “10 Ugly sites I saw this week” (just photos and caption)
• WEDNESDAY – Youtube
• THURSDAY – re-share of hilarious cat meme
• FRIDAY – photo of you at a happy hour, cute cafe, whatever. Or maybe of restaurant logo or menu design that you approve of. Heck, just post both; it’s not a crime to have 2 good ideas in one day!

I hope to god you prefer the HUMAN FORMULA because that’s what I’m so much more interested and intrigued by. I want to follow real people with real thoughts, NOT BRANDS! I don’t give a crap about brands. I don’t give two shits about the official Pixar social media account and what movie is coming out next. But do I wanna know what their lead designer is up on a daily basis? Do I wanna know what the couch looks like in his office? What kind of random shit he doodles on his lunch napkin? Yes, I do. That’s a hundred times more interesting and identifiable.

Oh here’s another tip:

• Stop caring about the [production] quality of your posts!

It might matter to have professional photoshoot images and professionally-edited videos if you’re a million-dollar brand. But if you’re not a giant company, then it makes little sense. Even worse is if you’re a one-man/one-woman show trying to act like a big company. I can’t think of anything alienating yourself further from your audience.

Most of you reading this are solo entrepreneurs. So act like it. Use it to your strength. Share photos right off your phone. Put a filter if you want but don’t waste 2 hours photoshopping it to look “perfect” (whatever that means). What’s REAL is perfect. And believe me, REAL is so hard to find nowadays.

5. Automate your social shares

For some people, the hardest part about social media is actually creating (or aggregating the content). And for others, the most annoying part is actually sharing it. And I totally understand.

Those who are on social media everyday are spending their time connecting with real people that they never have time to create content. Their days are spending commenting, liking, sharing. If they ever create, it’s just photos. Not like in-depth written guides or anything. Those creating actual content, like blog posts and videos, are so busy editing their content at they don’t have any energy/time left for posting on social media.

There’s definitely a clear divide between the minds of a chatterbox vs a creative. I definitely consider myself more of the latter.

So how do we deal with this? Having all this content but not enough time to post it to so many social media channels. Here are my tactics:

• If you’re taking photos/videos, share them right off your phone! No wasting time editing. Some services like Instagram (and maybe Youtube if it still does) can also repost to other places to save you time.
• For your blogs, install NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster (aka NextScripts: SNAP) on your site and have it automatically repost your blogs to Facebook page, Facebook group, LinkedIn page, Twitter, etc. It’s pretty cool!
• Also for your blogs, create an RSS campaign on your email marketing service so that it sends out an email every time you make a blog post or new Youtube video.
• Instead of using the NextScripts plugin, which can be quite fussy. You could just set up automations in Zapier. They are so damn powerful (I swear this should be a separate guide and I promise it’ll blow your mind if you never done it). I have them set up to automatically post to my social media accounts every time I release a new blog post or Youtube video.

6. Outsource your social media

Have you grown to a place where you have so many things to share? It’s time to outsource!

Yes, I’m fully aware of those autoshare and scheduling services like Hootsuite and what not. Look, I think those are great if you want to be a social media manager and handle multiple brands. But for a busy person with more important business matters, don’t waste your time. There are services out there that can help repost your content to all the different networks. They charge around $100/month and totally worth it!

You should set things up so all you have to do is create a blog, share videos/photos on only Facebook or Instagram (pick just one place) and let them repost it everywhere else.

7. What’s MY formula?

1. I create a Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter for all my professional brands. If it’s a personal brand, I’ll have Facebook, Instagram. Youtube if it’s relevant.
2. I blog whenever I want. Thank god, I somewhat like the freedom of writing and I type fast so it’s easy. Blogs are then automatically shared on FB page/group via Next:SNAP plugin, and sent out to email newsletter vs RSS campaign feature.
3. I do a Youtube recording session once every 4-6 months. I’ll record anywhere from 20-100 videos all at once. And then slowly release them over time. I’ll outsource the editing to somebody else if I need to do. I don’t care at all to do any professional editing, we just trim and do the “fastcut” effect. Nothing else. Recording videos one at a time takes way too much time (minimum 2-3 hours in setup and retakes). If you shoot all at once, you’ll quickly develop a rhythm and get a whole year’s worth of content in one session.
4. I take random spontaneous videos/photos and share on Instagram, Facebook story, and Facebook page. And it truly is RANDOM stuff (food, buildings, cars, products, things that are interesting to me personally. I don’t care about being relevant to the brand or niche).
5. I go quiet for months. Some months I’m busy as heck and got way more important things to do. In times like I don’t, I don’t waste focus with social media. I keep my head down and grind. When my work is done, I celebrate work and life on social media.
6. I’m very selective about what I re-share. I stay away from generic memes and quotes as much as possible and prefer the more unique hard-to-find stuff. I also don’t re-share from people who only steal and recycle other people’s content.

Be honest. Share what really appeals to you. Not what you think appeals to your audience. Don’t share that silly link that you didn’t even fully read. Share posts that you actually read from beginning to end, share videos that you watched all the way. Share something created by a fellow creative in the industry. And more than just sharing it, share your opinion on it. Don’t just toss content out there. Put an opinion. Start a conversation. Even if it’s only with yourself. Soon enough, people will join.

And [if you do it right]…not long after, your community will do all the social media-ing for you. You’ll be just a overseeing (moderating) eye because everyone else is too busy sharing their own opinions. And THAT, my friend, is how you do REAL social media marketing. It’s not about creating sales, it’s about creating a community. Creating a vision. An alternate future for your industry.