How To Schedule Social Media Content Effectively

There are several factors to consider when posting content across your Social Media platforms as a business. For years now, those working in Social Media Marketing will have been following ‘best practice’ guidelines based on scheduling content at prime times and peak days.

The time and effort put into managing Social Media networks are often underestimated, but simple steps can help keep you on track. Here are our five top suggestions when it comes to scheduling your Social Media content.

Prepare Your Content In Advance

The best way to properly utilise Social Media as a form of marketing is to share consistent, high-quality content across all of your platforms. To do this, it’s wise to prepare your content in advance to allow enough time to plan what you’re going to say, when and why.

A Social Media Strategy will help focus your key messages and increase the chances of meeting your marketing objectives. Your Social Media Content Plan can be as comprehensive as necessary to support your business.

It should ultimately save you time in the long run by removing the day to day task of posting to Social Media and allowing time to schedule content in advance.

Creating a Social Media Plan will also give you time to consider who your target audience is and how they differ from one Social Media platform to another. An increased organisation level will also support you in creating a coordinated campaign strategy across other marketing mediums.

Pro Tip:

Don’t forget that the terminology changes across each platform. For example, if you’re trying to increase engagement, don’t ask your Facebook followers to ‘retweet’ or your Twitter audience to ‘share’ your posts!

Facebook: React, Share, Comment, Send
Instagram: Like, Comment, Send, Save
Twitter: Reply, Retweet, Like
LinkedIn: React, Comment, Share, Send

Proof Proof Proof

Very rarely is a social post so time-sensitive that it would be worth rushing and risking a spelling or grammar mistake. If you’re writing your content plan in advance, then you should allow for enough time to revisit and proof the copy before it goes live.

Better yet, ask someone with fresh eyes to do this for you. If you’re reacting to something topical and want to post there and then, be sure to take your time and reduce the risk of embarrassing errors as much as possible.

Pro Tip: If you’re using handles to tag others in your content or hashtags to increase your reach, then use this proof time to double-check they’re correct. Remember that handles and trending hashtags may differ depending on the Social Media channel.

Optimise Your Assets

Even if your content topic is the same from platform to platform, you may wish to consider tailoring the creative side of your post too. This will reduce the risk of content fatigue and keep your timelines looking fresh across all your accounts.

Furthermore, each platform operates differently, and your creative may not appear how you intended from one to the other. For example, your Instagram grid posts need to be square, while Twitter often crops an image down.

Video content is another tricky avenue to navigate when working across several platforms because Instagram and Twitter tend to be a lot more restrictive than Facebook, for example. Hence, it would be best if you considered all platforms individually when producing and sharing video footage.

By customising your creative for each specific platform, you’ll be able to ensure your audience only see the high quality and engaging visual content.

Know Where Your Audiences Are

(and how best to reach them)

Although your following may overlap slightly from platform to platform, you are likely trying to reach different demographics via various Social Media Channels.

Businesses need to consider tailoring their content, creative and posting schedule to best align with each platform’s peak time and target audience, rather than share a blanket post to everyone. This includes the tone of your copy too. Your brand will likely have a digital tone of voice, but each platform allows for different levels of informality.

Furthermore, each Social Media platform has various features and limitations to consider when writing content. For example, the character limit on Twitter shouldn’t stop your Facebook Posts from being longer when needed, and equally, you shouldn’t neglect hashtags on Instagram because you’re not utilising them elsewhere.

When it’s time to write your content and collate any assets, consider adding a section for each platform into your schedule to highlight what is due to be shared where and when. Remember, the ‘lifetime’ of a post differs from platform to platform, so you can justify sharing multiple updates to Twitter in a day but less to Facebook or LinkedIn.

Stagger Your Scheduling Accordingly 

If you share the same content all at once – because let’s face it, it’s easy to do when posting manually or via a scheduling platform – then you risk looking spammy and your followers becoming unengaged.

However, if you still choose to share the same copy and creative across every platform on the same day, consider staggering your scheduling to allow different users to see different content across each platform. Users will likely be active on Twitter, for example, at other times of day to LinkedIn or Instagram.

Pro Tip: Don’t just jump on the latest trend or hashtag if you don’t fully understand the origin behind it or it’s not relevant to your target audience and a good representation of your brand.

Finally, always use your results to influence your future activity and focus on what your audience is responding to best. After all, you should know them better than anyone!