Most of us don’t have hours a day to invest in social media but here’s how to make a good start:

1 Make sure your social media pages all look consistent, professional and have strong branding (use the same header images, bold colours, large logo or company name)

2 Make sure all your set up fields are completed so your profiles are as complete as possible (don’t miss the new ‘call to action’ button that appears on your company’s Facebook page for example)

3 Get everyone in the team on board. Ask your staff for one contribution per week. Get an administrator to chase them up, store them, organise them and have them ready for use.

4 Use Tweetdeck or another scheduling tool – load up your Tweets for the month and then just add new ones as they occur. It takes the pressure off but means you have a good foundation of communications.

5 Re-purpose every piece of content. A full website article can be re-written into a friendly blog. You can make several Facebook and Linked In posts from it. You can also précis it right down to a Tweet that links back to the complete article.

There’s much, much more to say about this but make a start, give it a go but don’t be a slave to it!

We work in a bubble most of the time, only coming up for air when times are slightly quieter. During those times it’s easy to enjoy the peace but why not use your less frantic times to assess how you work and see if it could be more efficient?

I offer a service where I come in and have a chat about how things are done in your organisation. It’s often useful to talk to a few members of staff too – to find out what slows them down or is a real chore. Then I can work out if there are better systems, easier and more profitable ways to achieve more.

Our clients often comment on how docSAFE changed things for them – automatic backups, providing clients with secure access to their own files (saves on copying and faxing), online signatures and automatic follow ups and prompts. But that’s just part of the picture. We can automate lots of things, schedule all your social media, in short, do a number of things that will help your company work flow.

Looking at things dispassionately, challenging the ‘because that’s how it has always been done’ culture and examining the role of people in your firm is always best left to someone outside the business.

Improving things when it’s quiet will pay dividends when you’re busy again – and that’s when you’ll notice the real difference.