How To Schedule Social Media Posts Effectively

27 Jul How To Schedule Social Media Posts Effectively

Last week I broke down my daily social media management routine to explain how I manage all my client accounts without losing my mind. Planing and social media scheduling are my best friends when it comes to effectively running social media for my clients while having to do all the other things that come with social media and running my own business.

Why Use Social Media Scheduling?

Automation is a life saver when it comes to managing social media accounts. It allows you to plan ahead, save time, and get a good look at the big picture when it comes to your social media accounts. You’re free to spend this new found time on whatever your heart desires…or the next thing to cross off that long to-do list.

What Social Media Posts You Should Schedule?

While scheduling social media posts will save you time, you don’t want to rely solely on automation. You need some live action mixed into your content strategy. Whether that’s a timely tweet using the hashtag for the event you’re attending, or sharing an article your favorite industry magazine just published, leave room for real time posts and interactions. This will keep you from sounding robotic. With that said, with proper planning you can make your feeds feel authentically yours and take advantage of other tools like Instagram Stories and Facebook Live Videos for a more “in the now” feel.

What kind of posts are the best to schedule? Basically anything you know is coming up. Here are a few ideas:

Your themed days

If you’ve read my blog you know I’m all about planning and having themed social media days to make management effective and a little easier. For example if you share a tip, quote, or an outfit every week try planning these ahead of time and schedule them out. Read “How to Create a Content Calendar” if you need some direction on building a social media posting schedule that works for you.

Posts that promote your blog or email sign up list

If one of your goals is drive traffic to a landing page, blog or build email subscribers you should have posts that promote people taking these actions. These are perfect for sprinkling in and scheduling ahead of time.

Hashtag holidays

Check out my Hashtag Holiday Calendar in the resource library, and see if any hashtag holidays make sense for your business. Even if you don’t see something in my downloadable hashtag calendar, do a quick Google search as I guarantee you’ll find some of these fun days to participate in.

Content shared from other sources

In order to break up your content, and as a way to add more value to your followers, mixing in content  from other sources can be a good idea. This can be an article related to your industry or re-posting a user generated photo. You can curate and pre-schedule these posts ahead of time.

Pre-planned initiatives

Another content category which is great for social media scheduling is posts for any upcoming campaigns. For example, if you have a webinar or other product launch coming up, plan and create teaser and promotional posts ahead of time and pop them into your scheduling tool to build up buzz for the big launch.

Holidays/Re-curing events

Just like hashtag holidays, there are national and international traditional holidays you may want to post about. Same goes for annual events and awards ceremonies your brand or company may be a part of. Since you know these are coming up ahead of time they are great for scheduling and automation.

Posts that promote older content

A great way to fill your content calendar gaps and continually drive traffic to older poss on your blog or landing pages on your website is to schedule social media posts that promote these pages. As long as the content is relevant you can use social media scheduling to get new eyes on the content.

Social Media Scheduling Do’s and Don’ts

Do schedule as much as you want or need to. Sometimes I schedule months worth of advanced posts when possible.

Do automate, but don’t rely solely on post scheduling. Now that you have some more free time you’ should fill in gaps with more spontaneous posts.

Do add your own personality – This applies to every post but in this case I’m directing it specifically to content you might be re-posting or sharing from another source. Add your own insight to articles you’re retweeting or sharing to show personality and let your audience know why it may add value to them.

Don’t use the same captions when driving traffic to previously shared articles. Change up the wording so that followers are enticed to click.

Don’t use the same images. See previous point.

Don’t forget to check that your posts actually got published. When scheduling posts, be sure to check up on them to make sure they’ve posted correctly or at all. Service outages and system failures happen, and sometimes things can just get a little wonky.

My favorite tools for social media scheduling

Social media scheduling is not possible without a few tools to help! As mentioned last week I useFacebook Manager to schedule Facebook posts, and Hootsuite to schedule posts on other networks (Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram). We do this because the Facebook algorithm prefers when posts are made via the platform as opposed to a third party. Here are some of my favorites:

• Hootsuite or AgoraPulse: Because I like the look of the publishers once everything is scheduled in. Both also have a suite other management tools including analytics, and community management tools.
• Buffer: My favorite related content and retweets get scheduled at the times when my audience is most active in one click.
• Twitter Media Studio – this is a new one, but the Twitter media studio will make re-publishing and scheduling older tweets a little simpler. All you media tweets live in one place, you can click on them, add a new tweet and schedule off right from one screen!
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Social media scheduling and automation will make your life so much easier. It will give you time and clarity to come up with better campaigns, asses the overall direction of your social media presence and make changes. Plus who doesn’t need a few more free minutes in their life?

Do you have any favorite scheduling services? Let me know in a comment!

<3 DhariLo