Modern business involves spending a lot of time online. Some companies and sole traders exist solely online, utilizing websites and social media profiles to sell their products and services. Even those with a real life presence focus a lot of their time and money on building their businesses online. Online business is the future. It allows you to reach a huge audience, build a profile, speak with clients and customers instantly and can help to grow any business enormously. Even those small-town family-run companies that have been around for hundreds of years are now joining the hoards to set up online.
But, there’s a lot that goes into doing business online. It’s a lot more than simply turning your laptop on and sending a few emails. To do well, you have to be online seemingly 24/7. You need to be an active user on all social media platforms, or your posts won’t get attention. You need to reply to email and comments immediately, or your reader will think you don’t care. You need to be constantly churning out new content for your blog to help get it noticed and you need to find new ways to market your business as new methods are continually gaining attention and older ones fall out of favour.
There are sometimes just not enough hours in the day to get it all done well. So, instead of trying to create more hours, let’s look at ways to save time. A lot of what you do online can be done faster and more efficiently if you just stop wasting your own time.
Dealing with Spam
Junk mail was annoying. Then we all started getting spam emails instead, which were more annoying. But now we also get spam comments on our blogs and social media profiles. Users using apps to make completely irrelevant remarks in the hope you will follow them, or worse, spam accounts leaving clickbait messages on your blog.
Having to read them to find out if they are spam, before deleting and blocking them is a complete waste of your time. Time which could be used replying to genuine comments. Fortunately, there are tools to stop fake users accessing your accounts, double check that your customers are real with Netverify to cut down on spam comments and messages.
While you’re at it, go through your emails and unsubscribe to any that you don’t read.
Stopping Security Threats
Spam isn’t just annoying; it can be a security threat. Keep your website safe with an SSL Certificate and block fake loggins. This is especially crucial if you take information from customers and readers.
Remembering Passwords
Remembering passwords can be a nightmare. Which often leads to us using the same
password for everything. This can be dangerous. Use password remembering software so you can have a different, secure password for every account. Without having to reset it every time you get them wrong or forget one.
Posting to Social Media
To grow a social media following, you need to be an active user. You need to share content that helps and entertains people, promote the work of others, as well as your own, offer people advice and help when they need it and reply to any comments or message you may get. You also need to take time to find new profiles to follow and make sure you are interacting with seemingly everyone, all of the time.
It’s impossible. So, stop trying. Use a social media scheduler. Spend a little time at the start of every day scheduling your social media posts for the rest of the day. Making sure that only up to 20% of it is either selling your own products and linking to your own site. Then, just spend the odd few minutes looking through your feeds and replying to comments. If you see anything worth sharing during this time, add it to your scheduler for tomorrow.
Procrastinating
One way most of us waste time online is by literally wasting time. It can be so tempting to start browsing the internet, shopping or playing games. To avoid this, plan breaks into your day or use tools which stop you going off course.
Not Building Relationships
You spend time giving basic replies to comments and not really paying attention to people. This is a waste of that time. Instead, read their comments and give meaningful responses. Building relationships with readers will help your business to grow. Make the most of the time that you do spend on social media.
Being Unorganized
If there is one thing that leads to time wasting, it’s not being organized. Write a to-do list every day. Then, if anything comes up, find space to fit it in.
You can save literally hours every day by simply being organized and making the most of your time online.
Social Media With Rita 
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