Marketing When You’re Short on Time: What to Do with 1 Hour a Day
by Sloane Middleton Mann
Running a vintage shop means juggling dozens of tasks at once. You’re sourcing, cleaning, styling, researching, listing, packing, shipping—and that’s before you even think about marketing. And yet, marketing is what keeps your shop visible, memorable, and thriving. If you’ve got just one hour a day, you have more than enough time to build momentum without the stress.
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Sunday: Set Your Weekly Focus
Time investment: 1 hour of journaling and calendar planning
Start your week with clarity. If you don’t already, create an idea bank of topics you could speak or write about in your online content. Ideally, these ideas don’t just promote your product or store. Consider how to overlap your business goals with content ideas that audiences on social media would find entertaining, educational, or engaging. Once you’ve done that, choose two to three audience-centered content ideas to post this week.
Pro tip: Don’t worry about repeating similar concepts. Your audience consumes hundreds of pieces of content each day. If they resonate with what you’re saying, they won’t mind hearing it again.
Monday: Film or Design Your Content
Time investment: 20 minutes per piece of content
With your ideas in place, spend today batching content. Content batching means time-blocking a specific amount of time and filming or designing as much as possible within that limit. It’s perfect for perfectionists who might otherwise agonize over details all day. It’s also ideal for those who don’t want to look video-ready every day—do your hair and makeup once, choose a few outfits (or just tops), and film three videos in one sitting.
Pro tip: If you’re filming face-to-camera videos on your iPhone, the back camera offers far better quality than the selfie camera. To monitor yourself, screen-mirror your iPhone to your laptop. This way, you get the effect of a selfie camera while using the higher-quality back camera.
Tuesday: Edit Your Content
Time investment: 1 hour time-block within editing software
I know what you’re thinking – 1 hour on content editing?! With the right tools and strict time-blocking, it’s possible to edit efficiently. When video-editing, one incredible feature changes the game: Transcript-based editing. This allows you to edit video as easily as editing text in a document: highlight the text you want to remove, and it’s gone. For image-based posts, Canva remains the go-to tool, especially for carousel posts where text overlays tell a story. Canva’s vast library of fonts and graphics are the perfect match for this project.
Pro tip: You have less than three seconds to capture attention on social media before someone scrolls. That means that first impressions are everything. What can you say that will actually stop the scroll?
Wednesday: Schedule Your Content
Time investment: 1 hour & your week ahead is scheduled
You can now schedule posts directly in the Instagram app. No need for additional scheduler tools anymore! Preparing everything at once offers enormous relief for the rest of the week.
Don’t forget to add music from Instagram’s library to boost visibility.
Pro tip: It’s official: hashtags are no longer essential. Today’s advanced algorithm reads caption text and subtitles to match content with relevant audiences.
Thursday: Connect With Your Community
Time investment: 1 hour of scrolling and engaging
Marketing isn’t just broadcasting—it’s community building. There are two major tools to build out your community engagement practice: commenting and story replies.
When you view a piece of content by someone who has shopped with you (or you wish would) it’s time to leave a thoughtful comment. No, not a simple “love this!”. Challenge yourself to leave eight-word or more comments on at least five videos within the hour of your scroll.
As you start building out your social media following, it’s important that the followers you worked so hard to gain don’t forget about you. A great way to do this is by simply showing them that you’re there. Watch their Instagram stories not passively, but as if they were actually your friends. “Like” their stories via the heart button, or even reply if you have something considerate to say.
Pro Tip: If you have an additional 10 minutes to spend every day, focus that on posting a Story to your own Instagram. Think of Instagram Stories as your digital “OPEN” sign.
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Friday: Reorganize and Repurpose
Time investment: 1 hour in organization mode
Every time you create content, consider how parts of it could be used in at least three other ways. Whether it’s B-roll for other videos, a script restructured for additional content, or social posts that can double as blogs: you don’t have to double your work by reinventing the wheel with every post. Here’s the truth: fewer than 10 percent of followers see any single post, so repetition is strategic. So don’t waste your precious time and energy coming up with a new creative concept every time you post, when the chances are slim that your followers saw the original content in the first place.
Pro Tip: In order to repurpose content with ease, you need to stay on top of your content organization. Create an album on your Photos app with any brand-related assets. Start a folder in your Google Drive with your scripts, blogs, and email newsletters for future reference. Stick to a content calendar where all of your past posts are noted.
Saturday: Be Present
(With Customers, Loved Ones or Yourself)
Time investment: Up to you!
Being endlessly online is exhausting. What’s great about this schedule is the agreement to time-block yourself. This doesn’t mean taking precious time to be offline isn’t just as important. Being present with your life outside of your business is crucial to avoiding burnout and creating sustainable success.
One Hour a Day Is Enough
Marketing your vintage shop doesn’t require endless hours—only intention. Start small. Stay consistent. Your future customers—and your future self—will thank you.
Sloane Middleton Mann is the founder of Business of Vintage, the world’s only marketing agency specialized for vintage and antique shops. Follow @business.of.vintage on Instagram or listen to the Business of Vintage Podcast for vintage marketing tips and guides.
