Have you ever had one of those moments when you’re on your way to your day job, listening to a podcast episode, feeling grateful that you put that extra layer on, and thinking how your latest blog post is going to go down today…
But then you actually have a shock realisation and think, “Oh no! I didn’t schedule any tweets!”
And so you get a little frustrated, a little annoyed at yourself and your mood changes from good to bad.
Been there?
I know you have.
Me too!
And it’s SO irritating.
I mean, we dedicate so much time to writing a blog post that we think people are going to really appreciate…
Which means when we don’t promote it on our social media channels, that’s less chance that people will have of seeing what we’ve created.
So what’s a blogger to do if they want to get a breakthrough with their blog and grow their online presence, but it’s just so difficult to keep up with social media promotion?
Simple.
You create an automated posting schedule.
Say again?
How do I do that?
Why should I bother?
Take a breather.
This is how to create the best social media posting schedule.
What’s the point of a social media posting schedule?
Simply put, if you combine engaging social media messages, a plan for promoting new blog posts, sharing your old content and the best daily sharing frequency, you’re going to get a lot more traffic from social media.
Now some social media posting schedules can be made more complicated.
I personally prefer to keep things simple and streamlined, so I’m going to walk you through it step-by-step focusing on the following platforms:
Twitter
Instagram
Facebook
Pinterest
But before we dive into the detail, let’s first talk about how you can go about forming the foundation of your social media posting schedule in the first place – with timings.
After all, there’s no worse feeling then throwing yourself into something, only to realise that actually, you could’ve done with a bit of prep work and your strategy isn’t working as well as you’d hoped.
Because let’s be honest – that’s not a great feeling.
Thankfully, there’s an easy way to avoid it and make sure you’re creating the best social media posting schedule possible.
Actually, there’s two.
THE SIMPLE WAY TO CREATE THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA POSTING SCHEDULE
This process is, well, simple and sure enough, it’ll get you some good results!
All you have to do is pick popular times that you think people will be online – think on their way to work and just before bed – and put those times into your posting schedule.
As you start to think of popular posting times, you’ll start to think of even more (like lunchtime and when people are commuting in the evening), and this will form the foundation of your posting schedule.
From there, add those times into your social media management tool of choice and start adding content to your schedule.
Worried it’s not going to work?
Don’t be!
This is the way I first started and it worked well for me for a while. You’re picking key times that your audience is online and there’s nothing wrong with that.
This initial posting schedule will help you start to generate more traffic and followers from social media which will help to grow your online presence.
THE SUREFIRE WAY TO CREATE THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA POSTING SCHEDULE
Of course, you can always crank things up a notch and take this process to the next level.
How?
And a few other tools.
Now, I know I’ve mentioned this before…
But I mean, when I implemented my new posting schedule using Followerwonk, traffic to my website from social media increased by over 100% in just two months!
So I think I know a thing or two about how to grow your social media, engage your followers and get more traffic to your blog from social media…without sacrificing all your time and energy.
This is how you can use Followerwonk to optimise your posting schedule for Twitter…
The thing that’s different here is that you aren’t doing any guesswork – the tool does it all for you.
You can go to Followerwonk, hit Analyse, input your Twitter username and then scroll down the bar chat which will you show the peak times when members of your Twitter audience are active the most.
If you have a Buffer account, it gets even better.
From there, underneath the bar chart hit “sync with Buffer”, pick a certain number of times and then your most optimal posting times will be transferred into your Buffer schedule.
Like this:
Once you’ve done this, you can then schedule tweets at your most optimal times and update your posting times once a week so your content is always staying fresh.
This will help you not only generate more traffic to your blog from social media, but you’ll be able to build your email list and get your online presence out there in a bigger way.
After that, it’s all about actually scheduling your content.
And that starts with…
THE SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT TOOL
Yep.
I’ve got a whole post dedicated to why you need a social media management tool.
Don’t use one?
There is absolutely no way my blog would be where it is today if I didn’t schedule my social media posts using tools.
They make your life so much easier.
They save you time.
And that’s just the beginning.
So here are my pick of the best.
Buffer is my absolute favourite tool when it comes to managing my Twitter and Instagram profiles.
With Instagram, you get a notification when it’s time to post, but all management tools do that.
But with Twitter, Buffer just posts out your content exactly when it’s supposed to go out. Plus it’s super easy to use.
When it comes to Facebook, you want to schedule your posts directly within the platform as it doesn’t promote content that comes from third party platforms.
And for Pinterest, I’ve recently started using Boardbooster.
Now do you have to use Buffer or Boardbooster?
Nope.
Instead, you can experiment and find the right tools that work for you.
Hell you could either use a tool like SmarterQueue or ContentCal where you’ve got all your platforms within one dashboard or you could have one for each of your platforms!
It doesn’t matter as long as you like using the tool and it works for you.
Whatever tool you use it completely up to you (I can only give you my recommendations!)
But just to get you started, here are a few tools for each platform (apart from Facebook):
Buffer
SmarterQueue
Hootsuite
Edgar
Hootsuite
Buffer
Planoly
Boardbooster
Tailwind
Then once you’ve picked your social media management tools, you need to start thinking how you’re going to use these to plan out your content for each platform.
Now if you’re having a “oh man what do I do now?” moment, take a pause.
I’m going to break it all down for you.
But the key with all of your social media content is make your social messages appealing. Nobody wants to hit up a rubbish party, right?
That means, you need to think of your messages as call to actions, selling your followers on the value they’re going to get from your message.
And speaking of messages…
YOUR CONTENT IDEAS
You see, here’s the problem.
According to CoSchedule, 77% of your share your content on social media only 1-3 times. 40% of you only share your content on social media just 2 or 3 times. And 37% of you share your content on social media just once after you publish it.
Once.
Which means you are missing out on a hell of a lot of people who could see and read your blog posts.
Now?
You need a content strategy for social media.
This means that you not only want to be sharing your news and old blog posts, but you’ll want to be sharing messages to engage with your audience.
What’s more is you’ll want to make a note of this in a Google Doc.
Want to download a full copy of your own personalised social media posting schedule?
Grab it below and use it for your own platforms!
Storing your whole content strategy in one places means you have one place you need to go to when it comes to updating your management tool (P.S. I’m sharing this blog post 3-4 times just today using Buffer), and it also makes it a hell of a lot quicker for you to actually schedule your social updates.
What’s more, you can even have another Google Doc of potential ideas. So if you see a tweet or caption that inspires you, make some notes on it, change the messaging to suit you and your brand, and you’re good to go.
So you’re constantly pushing out valuable, engaging social updates and you’re targeting your audience directly.
Am I saying you shouldn’t just post live updates in the moment?
Absolutely not, that’s still relevant.
But you’re not going to get the best results that way.
I mean, think about it…
Do you have time to live tweet 10 times a day one Facebook post, two Instagram pictures and pin a load of relevant pins?
I’m guessing you don’t.
Instead, you can save yourself loads of time and create different styles of messaging that engage your audience and drive more traffic to your website.
For instance, these are the content categories you’ll want to focus on:
Other people’s articles
Inspiration
Questions
Tips
Your Blog Posts
Self-Promotion
Then you just switch up each category on a daily basis and the fun begins!
Now, let’s talk about updating your schedule regularly.
UPDATING YOUR POSTING SCHEDULE
Most of the time, people think they can either post as and when to social channels, or they can create a posting schedule and then leave it.
That’s not how it works. Hear me out.
Because our whole goal with posting schedules is to target more of our audience with each social media update, it’s important to make sure that your posting schedule is consistently relevant, to keep up with people’s ever-changing habits.
This means switching up your Twitter schedule once a week and updating your other channels once a month, so your constantly staying on top of when your audience is most active.
For me? I do this every Monday.
You see, as you’ve moved through this post, these are all items that you can put on your to-do list.
We’ve got a couple more elements to go but we’re getting there.
You know how important a social media posting schedule is and how it can benefit you.
(If you’d rather just have this as a short PDF, just download it below!)
The next phase of making sure you get the best results as possible, is by keeping your schedules updated.
The images you saw above of my Buffer account and the Followerwonk tool?
That’s the strategy in action.
So what’s next?
KEEPING TRACK OF IT ALL
In other words, your analytics.
And I’ve got a little quote for you which is one of my favourites…
“If you do what you’ve always done, then you’ll get what you’ve always got.”
Basically, you don’t want to keep working on your social media strategis if they aren’t working for you. If you’re not getting results from them, what’s the point?
You want to make sure you’re getting the best results possible and this comes from making sure that your strategies are actually working.
So for each of your social platforms, you want to be keeping a monthly track of all your stats.
Why can’t we just leave this step and go ahead with our posting schedule?
Because I want to make sure you’re on your way to your next breakthrough.
And you won’t know that if you don’t analyse what’s working and what’s not working.
Luckily for you, I’ve written a whole post on the best metrics to track for your social media platforms which you can go to right here.
Does that feel better?
I think so too.
Now I bet you have a question…
“Is that it?”
Well good news!
Almost.
We’re just forgetting one tiny little thing that we actually only mentioned just earlier.
Now if you’re thinking, “OMG this is way too much for me, I can’t handle it!”, I want you to realise one thing.
While you may think that you don’t need a social media posting schedule, it’s something that’s going to help transform your online presence.
That’s it.
Besides, you can always take elements from this post and work on them bit by bit. You don’t have to do it all in one go!
And remember, I’ve created an easier way for you to implement this schedule which you can grab at the end of this post.
The one thing we haven’t mentioned yet is…
DON’T FORGET LIVE INTERACTIONS
I know, I know, I’m giving you more work to do when you’ve already had so much information thrown at you!
But you still need to remind your audiene that you’re human.
Plus, social media is good fun.
So one of the most important things to keep in mind with your social media posting schedule is that you’ve still got to go into your platforms on a regular basis and engage with people.
What are some of the things you can do?
Here are a few ideas:
Facebook live
Interacting in Facebook groups
Joining Twitter chats
Updating people on Twitter about your day
Adding to your Instagram Story
Going live on Instagram
Pinning live to your different boards
The choice is yours!
For me, I do most of these things throughout a week.
Which means that I have a strong combination of scheduled content and content that’s live and engaging – you can see examples of these here, here and here!
You can do this too!
Don’t feel like you have to do all of these things every single day.
Simply pick what you prefer and work them into your schedule. I aim to do some form of live social interaction every single day.
For example, one day I might take part in a Twitter chat, one day I might interact in Facebook groups and another day I might do a live video in my Facebook group.
And so on, and so on.
So you can pick and choose what you prefer!
I know, I know.
I’m basically giving you even more work. Not only do you have to schedule social media content but you have to actively engage with the platforms too?
I get it.
It feels like a lot. But it’s worth it.
The good news is that you’re the boss and you can do whatever works for you and feels best for you.
It just takes some thought and preparation.
Now one final thing we’re going to cover!
CAPTURING NEW FOLLOWERS
First things first, your social media followers aren’t going to skyrocket overnight.
You’re not going to generate millions more followers just because you start to implement this schedule.
And that’s a good thing!
Why?
Because it’s not about the quantity…it’s about the quality. And you only want people to follow you who are interested in you and what you have to offer.
So if your followers don’t double overnight, don’t worry about it.
Just know that you’re definitely on your way to a breakthrough.
Feel like this is going to take you too much time?
I’ve done the hard work for you! Enter your details below and click the button to get access to a complete social media posting schedule.
It’s free!
So it’s kind of a no-brainer, right?
