Road Warrior Business – A Bus On A Dusty Road

Social Media Essentials For Your Road Warrior or Home-based Business One of the most important things you can do to build your social media presence for your road warrior or home-based business is to be on social media. Being active on social media will take a lot of time, planning, and effort. There are tools that you can use to help to save you time with your social media postings and campaigns. We use Adobe Spark to help us to build and design great-looking content. We use Hootsuite to help us to pre-schedule posts so that we can be active on social media without having to be on it all the time. We also use Tailwinds to help us post our pins on Pinterest. Social Media is no longer an option for most businesses. Just like having a brand for your business is no longer an option. To find out more about what social media platforms you should consider and why check out our blog 6 Top Social Media Platforms for Road Warriors or Home-based Business by clicking here. Brand Your Business No matter what size your business is - even if you are the only person in the business - take the time to brand your business. Many small business owners miss this step as they do not think branding their business is important. I feel like branding your business is something you should start with at the beginning of your business. Branding helps to force you to think about your business and what your business is about. To find out more about why you should brand your business you can read our blog Guide To Branding Your Home-Based Business, What You Need To Know by clicking here. Though we wrote this blog for home-based businesses if your business is a road-warrior business where you are traveling all the time - the principles are the same. Adobe Spark Helps You Design Amazing Graphics Your graphics on social media is very important. Having great graphics is an essential tool for marketing. It is very difficult to run a successful business without producing some kind of content and then finding a way to display that content so that people will want to hear what you have to say. This is where an app like Adobe Spark comes in. They will help you to design your graphics in a way that looks professional. This is why we really like Adobe Spark as it helps you design very nice looking visual social media posts. We use their professional (paid version). We love how it allows us to set up several brand logos we can put on our posts. We love this extra feature to be able to brand our posts as we continue to build our brand. To find out more about using Adobe Spark you can read our blog Why Use Adobe Spark for Your Social Media Graphics? by clicking here. Hootsuite and Tailwinds Help You Manage Your Time Managing your brand and content on Social Media takes time. There is no way around it, social media can consume your time. And this is a problem for most small business owners, as your time is limited. It really is what we call a Catch 22 as you need to have viable content to upload onto your social media to succeed but at the same time, your time is limited. This is why time management in managing your social media accounts is so crucial. There is hope for this as there are two programs I use a lot to help me manage my social media platform. One is Hootsuite. Hootsuite helps me post and manage my social media. The other is Tailwinds. I use Tailwinds to post my Pinterest Pins. Here is what each of these programs does for me in helping me manage my social media: Hootsuite We love Hootsuite as it allows us to be active on Social Media without having to go onto our social media accounts to post everyday. Hootsuite allows you to set up your posts and then schedule them for the time you want them to go out. Here are the reasons we suggest that you invest in a social media management platform like Hootsuite: Social Media Takes Time - Social Media takes time. You will need to have content and upload the content onto your social media. This is why large companies will have a team of people whose only job will be to manage social media content. Social Media can be very time-consuming. Hootsuite can help to make this part of posting much easier. Do Not Always See Results or ROI - It is hard to calculate the results or what we call Return On Investment (ROI). This is because the returns are many times hard to see when you compare the results to the time you spend on social media. Just posting once will not be enough, you will need to be active on social media and be constantly posting on the platforms. Hootsuite has some data that you can use to help you try to see your ROI or how successful your social media campaigns are. Need to be social - There is a very fine line with posting on social media. People get bored if they feel like you are always trying to sell them something. You need to be social to be on social media. Hootsuite helps you to organize and manage this in one location. We have the Professional Hootsuite plan that allows us to monitor 10 social media accounts. With those accounts, we have 4 brand accounts we are managing. This is why we love using Hootsuite: Supports all major social media - Hootsuite supports all major social media platforms. This means that you can post on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn at the same time. Pre-scheduled posts - Hootsuite allows me to pre-set my posts so that I do not need to worry about any of my social media accounts. I can set up Hootsuite to have social media posts going out every day. I can be on the road and not even have internet access but my posts are still posting on to my social media account as I have pre-scheduled them. I find having a program like this to be extremely liberating. I do not need to worry about my posts I can set the time I want the posts to go - I live in Asia but most of my customers are asleep when I am working. Hootsuite allows me to set the time so that I can have the posts go at the time I want them to go. Monitor social media in one place - You can manage all your social media comments, trends, and other things in one place. This means you do not need to login to each social media account but only need to login to your Hootsuite account. Data - Hootsuite gives you data so that you can also monitor your accounts and analysis the data right from the Hootsuite dashboard. This data can help you to look at your posts to see which ones are successful and which ones are not, in other words, your ROI. Hootsuite will give allow you to try their professional plan for 30 days free-of-charge. If you only need Hootsuite for 3 social media platforms and few posts they have a free version you can use. The cost for their professional plan that includes 10 social media accounts and unlimited posting (this is what I have ) is 19 USD per month that they bill annually. You can find out more about Hootsuite by clicking here. Tailwind App Another program that we use for our Pinterest pins is Tailwind App. This is similar to Hootsuite but with some differences. Here is why we also use Tailwinds for our social media posting: Tailwind has tribes - The tribe is the main feature of Tailwinds. What this means is that you join a tribe then post your content on the tribe platform. Other tribe members will share your pins on Pinterest and you in turn will also share their pins. It is all about working together as a group or "tribe" to help you and your tribe's pins get noticed. Schedule Pins - You can set dates and time you want your pins and your tribe member pins to go and on to what Pinterest board. This way you will be posting on to Pinterest without having to be on Pinterest all the time. Data - Like Hootsuite, Tailwinds will also give you some data as to what pins are more successful than others, etc. You can find out more about Tailwind and what the Tailwind App can do for you by clicking here. Conclusion Social Media is one of the essential parts of a business that most road-warrior and home-based businesses need to do. If you use the right tools for designing and managing your social media, it will help your social media postings not only look professional but at the same time, those tools will save you a lot of time. Related Questions How Can I Travel And Run A Successful Business While On The Road? We have listed our top 10 tips to travel and run a successful business while on the road. Our top 10 tips are: 1) Make sure your business category works on the road, 2) fully know and understand all your legal issues, 3) have the skills you need to be successful already in place, 4) have a concrete plan, 5) make sure your data is digital, 6) have all the correct tools, 7) have any support or admin support you may need already in place, 8) do a short travel test run before going on a longer trip, 9) make sure you are healthy and 10) Have the income and money you need to travel already in place. To discover more you can read our blog on 10 Tips to Travel and Run a Successful Business While On the Road by clicking here. Does My Business Need A Website? Today so many people are on the internet, so a website is very important. A website allows your clients to be able to find you through their internet searches. Having a website will also give you and your business a sense of credibility. Today, setting up a website is also a relatively cheap way for you to communicate with your customers. To find out more about why you should have a website for your business you can read our blog on Why Your Home-based Business Needs A Website, What You Need To Know by clicking here.