Social media is a villain to some small business owners. Its powers include sucking away your valuable time and leaving its users open to fumbles such as accidental posts and negative feedback. But with a few social media management skills, you can turn social media from foe to friend.

1. Make it Short and Sweet

Most business owners are intimidated by social media because they don’t think they have the time for it. Truth is, it’s more important that you consistently post and reply to commenters. If you have a spare half hour in the morning to drink your coffee and check your email, consider adding an extra 10 minutes for social media. Post something valuable to your customers, and be sure to reply back to any comments and see if there is anything in your newsfeed you would like to share with your customers. You don’t need to spend all day on Facebook, you just need to make it count!

2. Pick Your Channels

Not every business will benefit from all Facebook channels. Businesses that mostly cater to men probably won’t want to create a Facebook page. A lawyer may not exactly benefit from having an Instagram account. Think hard about your customers and the ways in which they like to be reached. Exposure is obviously important, but there is no sense in putting your message out there in a place where your customers won’t be listening.

3. Use Tools

Checking a bunch of social media sites can be frazzling. That’s when it pays to use tools like Hootsuite. Hootsite allows you to post to several social networks all without leaving your Hootsuite dashboard. You can also schedule posts to be posted at a later date. So during your social media and coffee break in the morning, you can schedule posts to go out all day.

One last tip for being a social super hero? Don’t automatically post from Twitter to Facebook, or vice versa. These sites are used in different ways. If you post to Twitter from Facebook, you lose out on the opportunity to use valuable hashtags. Plus, if someone knows you say the exact same thing on Twitter as you do on Facebook, they may choose to ignore you.

You may not receive a medal of honor or a key to the city for managing your small business’s social media presence with ease, but hopefully you’ll see customer engagement and sales rise faster than a speeding bullet.