If You Are Rich in Time, But Poor in Resources, You Need to Invest in Social Media!

Everyone is talking about what the best investment is for your business. What should you do with your first $100? When should you be investing in advertising?

However what about if you don’t have any money to invest? What can we do?

If you cannot spend any money for your business, you will need to spend more time.

Time is your most Valuable Resource

Time is a valuable resource for any entrepreneur, but especially if we do not have extra financial capital to spend. Then time becomes our only resource.

Two resources are under your control as an entrepreneur; money and time. If you cannot give money, you need to give time.

If you are not willing, or able, to dedicate regular time to your business then you are seriously hampering your growth. This is the difference between a part-time gig and a full-time job. If you are happy for your business to simply be a creative outlet or a side hustle, then this is fine.

However if you want to take your business to the next level you are going to need to manage your time better.

A successful business demands a lot of your time. This might mean rescheduling other things in your life to give more time to your business. Running a business is like a full-time job. It’s actually more like 2 full-time jobs back-to-back!

If you aren’t at that stage yet, build up slowly. Habits form slowly, but with regular exposure. Start by dedicating one hour to your business, once you feel comfortable, add another hour. Until you are working regular hours to make your business succeed.</p

Don’t forget; you also need to be efficient with your time. Be ruthless. Measure how beneficial the time you are spending is. In the early stages of business it’s all about priorities.

What is more important and more worthwhile for you to spend time on? Being engaged across all social media platforms? Having a good product? Focusing on customer service?

There will always be something competing for our attention, and skilled businesspeople are the ones who can prioritise what should come first!

What should I invest my time in?

A business is a huge time investment; therefore there are many things which you can dedicate your time to.

Creating

Firstly, you need to dedicate time to creating your product and your business. Creating itself demands lots of research. You will need to research the market you intend to enter. Where does your brand fit in amongst the already existing ecology?

Once you’re done with that, the creating doesn’t stop. You need to focus on creating marketing and collateral that will help you get your message out there. This could be creating advertising, social media posts, or content marketing.

Training Yourself

Investing in yourself is one of the biggest and most important investments you can make. You can always make yourself a better; writer, marketer, or businessperson.

This comes by both simple practice as well as training and study. Just by putting yourself out there you are already on your way to becoming a better businessperson. However you can always study and train to become better as well. Even if you don’t have a large budget there are many free resources online to start with, once you feel you have covered most of those topics you can then decide if you want to pay for further mentoring and training.

Being a good business owner also means being a good leader. If you’d like to see how important leadership skills are for entrepreneurs; follow this link here.

Managing Relations

Once you start to have interaction from the public, a whole new element in your business plan appears. That of customer relations.

How do you nurture those who are just getting interested in your products and services to eventually become loyal customers?

This takes time and interaction. You will need to message, respond to requests, and guide people on the journey to purchase. Now watch out though, as mentioned before, there is an efficient and not efficient way to do this. Just being on social media all the time is not necessarily the right way to manage relations and it may not be the most efficient use of your time. Do not fall into the trap of spending hours frivolously under the guise of business.

Solving Problems

How could there be a business without problems?

As you run your business things will come up. Issues with a website, people getting the wrong codes or products. At first you will need to solve it all yourself, until you’re at the stage where you can hire someone else to take care of these things for you.

However there will always be pressing issues demanding your attention.

How can social media help me?

Social media can be a big tool for time rich, resource poor entrepreneurs.

Many people think social media is just for uploading pictures and stories, but it is more than that. It has a wide range of uses for entrepreneurs at various stages in their businesses.

Mastering at least one platform is a great investment because it can help you reach new customers. It is now a vital part of online marketing and even paid agencies will not miss out on a well-rounded social media strategy.

The important thing is, while the bar to entry is low; it’s free to set up a social media account, there is a big time commitment here.

Here are some ways in which social media can help your business.

Research, find, and create your relevant niche

This is an important step that should be done before committing too much in terms of branding and products. This usually costs a fortune if you pay someone else to do it. You can get a good introduction to your niche and its demands through independent research.

What products are already out there and where do you fit in? You can also identify the stylistic choices the movers and shakers in your industry choose. Sticking to something familiar or in a similar vein will help you to be seen as part of the industry. Meaning people who are looking for this niche will also find what they’re looking for in your business.

If you would like a checklist of question to ask when looking for your ideal customer, have a look at what I wrote here.

Build a fanbase that spans beyond your hometown

This is probably the most well-known trait of social media. You can interact with literally anyone in the world, so long as they also have the internet. And it’s totally FREE.

Not too long ago advertising cost an arm and a leg. You’d have to pay so much just to put fliers in every mailbox in town, or rent a billboard on the highway. Gone are those days and the barrier to entry has all but been torn down. Social media marketing tends to differ from old school marketing in another important way; specificity. Not only is marketing so much cheaper, but it is so much better at reaching your target audience than the mass marketing approach and mailbox pamphlets. The only cost will be your time to invest and master this vital business aspect.

Drive traffic back to websites and products

Filling in another important aspect of both marketing and customer relations is the power of social media to capture a customer’s attention and drive traffic back to your website or online shop.

It’s not just enough to present your brand to your target audience, but you need to provide value and bring them back to your selling platform. Social media helps the conversion process from a curious outsider to your inner circle of true fans. Things like this take time to study, sales pipelines, providing value through content creation. Once again, money is not the issue, rather how much time can you commit to this endeavour?

If you would like to know more about building a circle of true fans, check out this article here! 

With that I hope that I have given you some good ideas to go back and tinker with. Do not be put off by the financial aspect in starting a business. So much of what needs to be done is dependent solely on your time.

So are you ready to utilise your time positively? Do you want to master social media marketing to bring profits to your business?

Dr Raja Yasmin is the founder of the EQBIZ Academy. She has both real life experience running businesses as well as 20 years of teaching experience. Now Dr Raja Yasmin is ready to help women become empowered through business. If you would like to receive a free marketing resource for your business, sign up here.