Finding time to maintain your social media presence can be difficult, but expanding it? That seems even harder.

Not to worry. With a little help, you can build your social media presence while juggling other responsibilities. We’ve compiled a list of five things you can do whenever you have an extra five minutes that can help you build a social following.

1) Comment on one LinkedIn group post

LinkedIn groups are a great way to connect with other professionals in your field, or in fields related to yours. Whether you want to stay on top of current trends in your niche, network with businesses who might want to buy your products and services or establish yourself as an expert in your field, groups can help.

Posting on groups can drive traffic to your profile and website. Posts you make to a group will also show up on your profile’s feed. Commenting has the same benefits.

If you have a bit of extra time once a week, browse through your group feed and find a post you can give a thoughtful, interesting response to and post it. Otherwise, if you have an article or blog post that others in a group might benefit from, post that.

If you haven’t joined any groups yet, take the time to join a couple of groups related to your business or desired customer base.

2) Reach out to three people on Twitter

Seventy-four percent of Twitter users follow small businesses to get product updates. Plus, the stats also show that people who follow brands on Twitter are 47 percent more likely to visit their website, and they’re 72 percent more likely to buy from brands they follow. In other words, Twitter can be an extraordinary marketing tool if you engage with people.

While you should maintain steady engagement with current followers, reaching out to new people is vital. Five minutes is a good amount of time to connect with people who might be interested in what you’re selling.

You could do this in a number of ways.

• Use Twitter’s search to find and follow a few people with interests and location relevant to your business. This alerts them to your presence and encourages them to follow you back.
• Find tweets with content relevant to your business and respond to them. This builds rapport and helps others feel appreciated.
• Search for questions relevant to your business and answer them.

Check out our article “Building Twitter Engagement is as Easy as 1-2-3.”

3) Check out the current trending topics on Pinterest Analytics

Creating genuinely interesting posts about topics people are talking about is a great way to expand your social media presence. Using trending topics increases the likelihood that your post will be found by people who don’t yet follow you.

Pins related to trending topics see an average 94 percent increase in click-through. That’s right, by creating a pin relating to a trending topic, you can almost double the amount of people who visit your website from it.

Take five minutes to visit Pinterest Analytics to check out trending topics, brainstorm a few ways to connect those topics back to your brand and pin the result.

You could, of course, do this on any social network.

4) Take a picture (or three)

Pictures aren’t only viable on networks like Pinterest and Instagram. They’re increasingly important on Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn. Using your own photos is cheaper and more personal than buying stock photos, and with smartphones and apps, it’s less expensive and easier than ever.

Instead of taking a picture every time you want to post to social media, consider streamlining the process by creating a library of images to use socially. Anytime you have an extra five minutes, snap a few business-related pictures to add to the library. You can even put them through a filtering program like Inkscape or Gimp to make them more visually stunning.

Of course, if you have a time-sensitive image that you’d like to post right away, go for it.

For some image ideas, check out our post, “12 Images you Should Share on Social Media.”

5) Follow one of your industry’s top influencers

On any social network, following top influencers can help you grow your own following, while staying up-to-date with important trends. You can reply to them, share their posts and eventually they’ll share your posts too.

Check out some possible influencers in your industry on LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networks. Follow these people and engage with them while posting high-quality content of your own.

Do something social whenever you have five minutes to spare and you may just be surprised at how fast your following grows.

Sarah Tanksalvala is a freelance business, technology and lifestyle writer based in Evergreen, Colorado.

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