What is social media scheduling, and why is it important?
Time is money, and all marketing professionals know this very well. They also know that staying on top of the game when it comes to social media is no exception.
We’ve once again seen a noticeable rise in social media usage, the reason why now it is more important than ever to schedule your social media posts at the right time for each social media channel so you can reach your desired audiences.
What is social media scheduling?
Social media scheduling is the act of scheduling all your social posts to be posted at a particular time or date on your specified social media account(s). These could be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. While social media never sleeps, it’s important to recognise that you do! With this in mind, social media scheduling is the best way to deliver your content while you’re busy at work or snuggled in bed during weekends. And let us tell you why!
The benefits of social media scheduling
Having a well defined social media content schedule comes with great benefits for you, your business and your customers.
- Your business can look active whilst you aren’t physically available – nowadays, you don’t need to be holding your phone in your hand to post an engaging Instagram post or story, there are social media scheduling apps and tools that can do that for you in no time.
- You can spend more time improving your content marketing strategy – rather than having to thinks about each social media post, their captions, hashtags, imagery, CTAs and so on; by scheduling social media posts in advance (usually a week), you will be able to sit and think about your future posts, so you can create more engaging content that will speak to your customers on a more personal level.
We’ve said it before, but we’ll repeat it – content marketing is king, and if we haven’t convinced you of this yet, head over to our blog on a beginner’s guide to content marketing.
- You can send out posts even without access to the internet – this will certainly put your mind at ease when it comes to blackouts or setting up the hotel WIFI whilst travelling
- You can post outside of business hours – you can schedule posts both outside of business hours and during weekends, which means your social media accounts will be 24/7 active; this, in turn, will enhance your brand image, visibility and engagement metrics
- You will be less distracted – social media can represent a massive distraction as you’d always need to stop your work to post on various social media channels; with social media scheduling, you can finish your tasks in peace and without any interruptions
- You can strategically divide your posts – instead of posting everything at once, a social media scheduler will space out posts, making sure that you’ll reap the highest return on your content marketing efforts
- You will be able to manage multiple social media accounts in one single place – social media scheduling tools allow you to add all your social accounts together; this is extremely useful as most marketing professionals have to manage multiple platforms at the same time (such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn), and it also helps to diversify content on various platforms
- You will achieve constant online presence – by pre-scheduling your posts, you’ll be able to stick to regular and consistent times to make posts live, which in turn will deliver a steady social media presence in your audience’s eyes
Tips & tricks for effective social media scheduling
Whilst social media scheduling might seem easy-peasy to you, what comes next can make a big difference to your success. Make sure to follow our tips so you can make the most of your social media marketing efforts.
- Focus on engagement – make sure to schedule your social media posts for the times that your engagement is at it’s highest
- Always review your scheduled posts – double-check everything you’ve written and make sure you have no spelling mistakes in your captions; also, try to make your tone of voice as close to your audience’s language as possible
- Monitor the post’s engagement – just because you’ve posted something on social media, it doesn’t mean that now you can rest assured that everything will work out on its own, so check your post from time to time, and make sure to reply to any questions from your followers
- Plan out your social media calendar ahead – carefully time your posts to reach different time zones as well (where applicable)
- Allow flexibility – keep up with trends and news in your industry; you can even set up alerts for keywords and terms in Google Alert, and use content aggregation tools to bring relevant articles to your attention; by doing so, you will be able to continue to schedule most of your posts, but still share current content with your audiences
- Have a right balance between automation and manual scheduling – as long as you actively monitor your social media engagement metrics, everything is well, however, make sure to respond and react when needed, so you maintain your brand active and interested in people’s wants and needs (this will significantly strengthen your relationship with your current and prospective customers)
And to make your life even easier, we have a whole article on our top 9 social media scheduling tools to use that you should check out to make the most out of your social media scheduling strategy.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is an essential part of any business marketing strategy, and scheduling plays a significant role. Social platforms can help your brand connect with your customers, increase brand awareness, and boost your leads (and sales).
In case you’ve missed it, we have some great blogs on how to create a social media strategy and on how content strategy can improve your customer engagement that we think you will enjoy reading.
So how do you manage your social media marketing channels? Do you use automation tools or manual participation only? At Lnet, we have dedicated HubSpot support services to help you grow your business with a unique scheduling system that can significantly increase your visibility, so make sure to get in touch with us to find out more.
A lot of business’s are present on social media sites however most customers or people browsing the company’s website don’t Read more
There’s no denying that, in today’s society, social media is huge. Most of us have at least one social media Read more
Ranking Issue Do you find that your competitors are performing better than you with their ads and that they're placed Read more
Are you looking for a place to work where you wake up on Monday morning happy? We are looking for Read more
