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While social media can be entertaining, educational, and a networking haven for your agency, it takes a great deal of work, flexibility and consistency to be utilize it successfully. Anyone can do it, but not everyone can achieve a positive ROI. If you aren’t careful, you can easily burn out your agencies reputation. So how can you juggle growing your agency without running out of steam? Well, carefully.

Here are five ways to be engaging and productive on social media for your agency (without your agency getting overly fatigued).

1. Have a morning planning session for your marketing team.

Spend the early hours of the day preparing yourself and your agency for the day ahead, and utilize it as a time to recharge. The key is being prepared and well planned out for at least 2 weeks of content.

When I travel, I personally take advantage of any alone time that I have by taking a stroll to explore on my own marketing thoughts (make sure to jot down your thoughts and ideas). Usually it’s when you’re surrounded by chaos that you need to shut down and re-energize the most. When you take quiet time for yourself, you’ll find that on many occasions, the silence will help you get your thoughts and ideas together with reenergized creativity.

2. Utilize resources and social tools.

Don’t be afraid to use tools that can help you measure the impact of your social message.

I use Buffer to schedule my tweets and other social posts that I automate. (That being said, I don’t want to automate too much, it’s got to be a balance.)  I schedule posts ahead of time when I travel, so that I don’t appear to be off the grid. Using tools like this will help you remain active in the social world.  When you and your agency tweet or post, your content will be shared and people will engage with you even though you may not be online.  When this occurs, make sure you do interact with others, so you don’t look like a robot. No one likes a robot! People like creativity and uniqueness so be YOU.

One way I choose to interact is tweeting insightful quotes, as they seem to capture the most engagement. I do mix it up by combining the quote with an eye-catching photo on some occasions but quotes say a lot and people like to engage with them.  Sharing articles about your industry knowledge, your successes, and lessons along the way are also popular.

Get creative with your content and don’t be afraid to change it up.

3. Unplug yourself.

Sounds counterintuitive when social media is a platform that is “always on” but by recharging once a week or once every other week can renew your social-media spirit.

You don’t need to photograph and share everything you eat or drink, it is OK to do it on occasion, but only on occasion. Live in the moment with your family and friends, and try to actually live your life, rather than worrying about crafting your next tweet or status update.  Take a bite of your meal and taste the food, take a drink of your beer – truly taste it! That memory is worth 1,000 photos.  Instead of focusing on your next photo or post, give your mind a break. Who knows what it will come up with? This will allow you and your mind to be MORE creative.

4. Create an engaging content strategy to reach your audience. Change it up! Remember do not be a robot – no one like robots! Your social networks are very similar to a TV station; when I tune in, I want to learn something new.  I want to be entertained or AMAZED!

You MUST read your comments and interact with your followers. t’s where I get many of my writing ideas and how I interact with many of our customers and prospects. If your audience appreciates what you contribute, it’s a great opportunity to give them more of that in a unique, useful and productive message. Pay attention to your audience!

Like your agency website, make each of your social channels a visual feast for your viewers. For instance, when you share an article across various social media channels, change up the photo, so that no one has to see the same content on multiple websites.

5. Work with a team you trust.You can’t do it alone. Surround yourself with a loyal, trustworthy team. Every agency needs a social media engineer.

Use your gut instinct to align yourself with genuine harmonious teammates.  Make sure you take care of them, because in return, they will take care of you and your business. The most important thing is to provide an honest perspective so the team can be honest and earn trust. In turn, your posts will be more creative and more like your agencies culture.

Although these steps seem to be easy and straightforward enough, they must be consistently implemented.It’s easy to say, but its work on a daily basis. Make sure to tweak and recalibrate each social channel or your agencies brand as you go along your social media journey to figure out what will work best for each case.  As we all know, social media moves at hyper-speed, and therefore it’s mandatory to adjust what will improve your agencies brand or image on a constant basis. Failure will come if you and your agency become stagnant.