If you’re out there reading this (and were anything like me when I started) have your business on social media at times can be frightening and overwhelming. You know that you need to use it for your business, but the concept is big and scary.

However, being a business on social media doesn’t need to be scary or overwhelming. There’s one key thing you need to do in order to be successful with your business on social media, consistency.

There are plenty of ways you can make your social media efforts less overwhelming. I’m going to share the three fundamentals that I use to keep my social media efforts effortless and effective.

– Keep your brand voice and message consistent
– Maintain a posting schedule that’s consistent
– Use a consistent process

Follow these 3 things and you’ll see an increase in engagement and followers.

Keep your message and business on social media consistent

To keep your readers engaged and watching, your business on social media needs to have variations in your content. It’s good to have a balanced mix of blog posts, memes, shared content and videos, to name a few. While you do it, you need to ensure that you leave a lasting overall impression of your company or project. Otherwise, having your business on social media isn’t going to reap you many benefits.

The voice and message of your business on social media is the means to unify all this different content into a cohesive image. It’s how your customers and potential customers always know it’s you.

Sit down and figure out, if your business was its own person, what would s/he sound like? How would s/he speak? Casual and fun? Business professional and to the point? Assertive and in your face? No matter the choice, your goal will be to reflect this image in anything you present.

My recommendation is develop a business voice that feels right to you and your own values. Build from there. The truer you are to yourself, the easier content creation/cultivation becomes.

Maintain a posting schedule that’s consistent

Sounds simple, right? Don’t think it will make a difference? Wrong. Remember, you’re working with, and appealing to, people. People, as a whole, like consistency. They like things to look forward to.

For example, I wait eagerly for my favorite blogs to drop new content, and they always do it like clockwork. The more I read, the more my anticipation builds between them, and the more engaged and loyal I become.

Based on this principle, I set up a basic schedule that ensures my audience comes to expect my presence. I want them to look forward to it.

Use a consistent process

Once you have a schedule, it’s easy to design a process for your business on social media which makes it quick and efficient to fill. I’ll continue to draw from my own example.

We know there will be 2 posts created as new content each week. (This is one of them in fact!) This means two of those days have themed posts predetermined by the blog topics.

That only leaves 3 other days of content to fill.  I can also use pieces of the blog post itself to generate other media like memes and videos.  I try to create weekly or monthly themes to make it even easier to batch create/curate content.

Don’t be afraid of scheduling tools

We’ve all heard that using scheduling tools like Coschedule or Buffer can affect your visibility on social media networks. While there may have been a period where that’s true, it no longer seems to make a difference if you post inherently or with a scheduler.

The content matters, where you’re directly their users matter, but otherwise the algorithms don’t care if you sign in to post or do it through another service.

I use Buffer and I love it. I have client who uses CoSchedule and swear by it. Use the tools available to you to make your social media journey easier.

Just using Instagram? Look at Grum to pre-schedule. A loyal Facebook user only? They have inherent posting tools available now to schedule. Twitter queen? Commun.it will rock your world.

Set up a process, make it easy and get it done. That’s the only way to make sure you do grow your loyal tribe.