Your to-do list keeps piling up, and your stress levels rise high?
Before cutting down from your social media tasks, you should consider automating your posting. Think about how much time you could save if you plan your social media updates for the next week or month.
All the content marketers out there already know the importance of an editorial calendar, to plan ahead your blog content and to concentrate all your creative power to strategically chosen content ideas. The same goes for social media content too.
Of course, social media is a dynamic environment, and it’s always changing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from planning your updates ahead of time. You can still be flexible and slip some real-time posts if the need arise.
Don’t get me wrong: I agree that social media is about interaction, engagement and conversations. I am not suggesting to automate everything! But having your content posted at the right time is extremely beneficial for any business with an online presence.
Let’s see some of the advantages of creating a social media content calendar and automating your posting:
#1 Posting Consistency
You need to get your audience accustomed to a certain rhythm of social updates. Don’t confuse them by flooding them with updates one day and completely forget about them the next day. By automating your posting and choosing the exact times when to share, you give your followers predictability. They will know when to expect news from you, thus increasing the chances to actually see your posts.
You don’t want to spam your fans with social updates, but you don’t want to neglect them either. Consistency is the key!
#2 Extended Reach
Having your posts scheduled at certain times helps you connect with people on the other side of the world, that may be asleep when you are available online. With the help of Facebook Insights, you can research your audience, and see when they’re online. This way you’ll know what are the optimal times to share your content for maximum reach.
You can even schedule content for the weekend or when you are on vacation.
#3 Avoiding Mistakes
Planning your social media posts in advance gives you the opportunity to really study your ideas and catch eventual errors before the updates go public. You can easily prevent embarrassing mistakes from happening.
You’ll have the opportunity to get your entire team’s help spotting eventual errors before it’s too late.
#4 Sharing the right amount of content
You can spread out your updates throughout the day, even when you are not at your desk. This way you’ll avoid overwhelming your audience with bursts of links and posts a few times per day when you’re available. Instead, use this time to engage with your potential customers: leave a comment, like or share their content. Concentrate your efforts on bringing your potential clients down the marketing funnel and generate sales.
#5 Better control over the type of content shared
When you have a clear strategy in mind, you can decide to balance the various types of content that you share on social media. You can decide to share a certain amount of video content, images, links or plain text. The ratio of different types of social updates depends on your audience and your business goals. But with a strategic approach to social media marketing, you can guide people’s steps down the sales funnel without leaving it to chance.
#6 Opportunity to test and improve your strategy
Having control over what and when you share with your followers, gives you the opportunity to track your success and compare various approaches. Even if you plan ahead your updates, you still have the flexibility to change your settings depending on your results. You want to constantly improve your strategy according to your audience’s response. So, when you use an automation tool for scheduling, testing different scenarios and changing your strategy is a trivial task.
Your social media marketing calendar will work as a tracking report too, that you can use to refer back to previous successful campaigns and learn from them. You can do A/B testing and gradually improve your strategy by keeping the variation that gets more engagement and reach.
#7 Become more productive
It’s like you have more hours in a day. Think about it: you spend some time to schedule a whole week’s worth of posts and then, you get to use the gained time on some other tasks.
You can schedule the same post on different days and times, to get more exposure. People that are not online when the first post was published will get the chance to see it the second time it runs.
Even more, if you use an all-in-one scheduling software like Mass Planner, you can post the same content on all your social accounts. Saving hours of your time, just by doing that.
Another way to boost your productivity is to schedule your group posts. With Mass Planner you can find the most relevant groups in your niche and automatically join them to start engaging with the communities, thanks to the Group Finder and Joiner modules. Most of the conversations with the group members have to be done manually because you can’t automate that. But every once in a while you can schedule relevant posts, like for example when you have a new blog posts that can be helpful for these groups members.
Of course, there will be some real-time posts that you have to publish manually. And you still have to engage with your fans, which you can’t automate. But it doesn’t even compare with the time you save by automating 90% of your social marketing work.
#8 More time to brainstorm ideas and get creative
Let’s say you set aside one or two hours every Monday morning to craft your Facebook posts for the whole week. You’ll be doing this in a strategic way because you’ll not be rushed to publish all the updates manually. So you’ll be spending time crafting your ideas and integrating your brand’s voice into your content. When you see all the posts for the week in one place, you’ll be able to create a fluid social strategy. You’ll be able to understand how to better reflect your brand mission and business goals through your content.
Scheduling your Facebook posts, or your tweets, allows you to be more creative than writing them on the fly. Once you have your social media calendar in front of you, you’ll be able to spot flaws and get creative.
Your stress levels will also decrease once you don’t have the pressure to come up with insightful posts every few hours. All you need to do is set aside a few hours to brainstorm your ideas and craft your social media plan for a week at a time. No more searching for a last minute inspiration, no more writer’s block or delays because of some images that are not ready in time.
#9 Be on top of relevant holidays and events
You can plan your updates for the holidays or important events even with months in advance. You will not be wondering if you have enough content for the coming holiday. Your social updates will be in line with your overall marketing strategy.
Of course, you can step in and add some manual updates, but you will definitely not miss any holiday this year if you plan in advance your social media content. You can always come back to your planned posts and tweak them as you like.
Does your business have a special internal event? Schedule posts for these events too, to let your fans get to know your brand better. Step in and add some “behind the scene” photos from that event. You will have the time to improvise with these type of posts when you’re not in a hurry.
#10 You can get your entire team involved in planning
Copywriters, Graphic Designers, Social Media Marketers – your entire team will have more breathing room and time for creativity when you plan your social updates in advance. Have them work together to craft the best content for your accounts. They will not be forced to work against the clock, making them more relaxed and productive.
Social Media Automation can improve your reach and engagement, and it can also give you the opportunity to create a balanced social strategy while boosting your productivity and performance. The key is to use the right tools!