FREE SCHEDULING TOOL – REMOVING THE HASSLE FROM SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media can be a hard beast to tame. It can seem overwhelming and often people question whether it’s worth bothering with at all. If you agree with, or have ever asked yourself any of the following, then this exercise is definitely for you;
- It’s overwhelming – I can’t stay on top of it
- There’s not enough time in the day
- I have other priorities
- When should I post?
- What should I post?
- How often should I post?
- I don’t know what I’m doing
- Is it having any impact on my business?
- Is it even worth bothering with?
SOUND FAMILIAR? THEN LET’S BEGIN TO TAME THAT BEAST
Let’s look at Facebook. The biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to posting on Facebook are;
- Poor content
- Poor page set up (cover/profile images)
- An inappropriate follower base
- Not utilising paid/sponsored ads to target
The most important areas to start with are your follower base and your content. There is no point in having great content if the wrong audience is seeing it. And there’s no point in having your target audience follow you if your content is not engaging them.
Firstly you need to run a Facebook page ad to promote your page. But only promote it to your TARGET AUDIENCE. Otherwise you really are throwing mud against the wall and hoping some of it sticks. We don’t mean increasing likes by inviting everyone you know. We mean targeting the people who are likely to purchase your products or services in future.
For example, if you sell handmade baby clothes then you want your followers to be predominantly mums or even grandparents. If you only sell to a specific region due to expensive shipping costs then you want to target an audience in the appropriate region.
Now onto scheduling….the reason you are reading this post.
SCHEDULING – THE DIFFERENCE IT WILL MAKE
Scheduling will;
- Make social media seem less overwhelming. Help you maintain your sanity!
- Ensure higher quality posts and content – meaning greater chance of success (or sales)
- Less mistakes (typos and errors)
- Planned and consistent content
- Content readily available
- Enables you to monitor and evaluate
- Saves time (this is probably the biggest plus of scheduling – from a personal perspective anyway).
NOW DOWNLOAD OUR FREE SCHEDULING TOOL – CLICK HERE
Print this off and work through the next steps.
NEXT STEPS
1) CREATE YOUR OWN POST TYPES AND CATEGORIES
You need to decide what types of posts your followers will find useful, relevant, engaging, and even fun. Think about:
What is going to interest your target audience?
Stories? Tips? Ideas? News? Things they can relate to?
Do you want to create a sharing platform? Where people can air/share/support.
Will they be engaged by inspirational quotes?
Do they want Blog posts – snippets of blogs that go straight to your website
Do you want to pose questions to your followers to learn more about them/get feedback?
How about sharing your followers’ questions so that a community forms?
Do you want to personalise your brand with personal posts?
Do you have an enticing offering or successes to share (promotional posts)?
Example: If you were the author of a cook book you may want to have a ‘Recipe of the week’ post. Or a ‘Tuesday’s Tasty Tip’. Once a week you might want to do a little ‘self promotion’ post with a call to action (a link where they could purchase your book perhaps).
ACTION: Create your own post types and write them at the bottom of your free scheduling tool. Create about 4 or 5 to start with (this means you can post 4 or 5 times a week, with a different post type each time). Remember the Third & Public 80/20 rule. 80 per cent of posts should be value content. 20 per cent maximum should be promotional (and you will likely need to boost these posts to increase reach).
Here are some post types to help you if you get stuck. Blog posts – Inspirational Quote – Picture Quote – Tips – Stories – Follower Questions – Personal Post – Promotional Post – Ideas Post – Community Question.
2) DECIDING WHEN TO POST
Now you need to decide the best time to post. It’s that never-ending question that we would all love to know the definitive answer to. Quite frankly this varies from business to business and the only way to know is start with some form of logic and see how you go.
Try and test different times. E.g. Tip of the week might be on a Monday at 6:00 am. So write 6:00 am on the top left and then put the post type in the Monday slot. Quote of the week might be on a Tuesday at 11:00 am so write this down. Then try the next post on another day at a later time and so on.
Note: you do not need a post on every day. But you can if you are feeling eager (you will obviously need 7 post types or you could run one post type on more than one day).
Test and evaluate – put posts in at different times of the day and run this schedule for 5 weeks. After 5 weeks see which times and days were performing well. You can find this in your Insights section of your Facebook page. Just scroll down to the section that says ‘Your 5 most recent posts’. You can expand this and see ‘all posts’. Look at the reach and engagement. Engagement is really what you want to be working on maximizing. Reach is great but engagement is Gold!
If one particular time or day was performing badly then change it. Then test the new time for the next 5 weeks.
ACTION: Choose your times to post. Write your post types into each time slot.
3) CREATING YOUR AMAZING CONTENT
TIP 1:
Create sub folders in a ‘social media’ folder on your computer (do it now). A folder for each post type is the easiest way. So you should have 4 or 5 post folders in one main social media folder.
TIP 2:
Gather content in batches. Spend half a day gathering the content for your different post types e.g. research five top tips and put them in a folder called ‘Top Tips’. Do the same for ‘Inspirational Quotes’ and so on. It’s easier to concentrate on one post type at a time rather than scattergun. This means you’ll have 5 whole weeks of social media posts at your fingertips (bliss).
TIP 3:
When you are looking for content make sure it is in line with your own beliefs and brand. If you use someone else’s content then reference them. Or adapt it to become your own.
TIP 4:
Try and personalise your content. E.g. put a quote on a picture and put your web address on the bottom. You can do this in PowerPoint, or use Apps such as Canva (free), Phonto (free), Word Swag, Wordfoto. There are so many options out there.
TIP 5:
If you are super keen to take all of the pain away from social media then you can go one step further and use a platform like Hootsuite or Edgar. These platforms enable you to put your posts in a database online that will post your content for you automatically. This is great because it will save you even more time. They offer free and paid for plans.
FINALLY
No more faffing! Set aside 1 hour each week to schedule the following weeks posts. Put it in your diary NOW!
Work on a five week content flow. So have all of your content ready for the next five weeks.
When you stumble across ideas or have that light bulb moment for a post, make sure you file it and have it ready for the coming weeks.
Remember – ask yourself – will my audience be interested in my post – is it useful – is it of value. If it’s not – scrap it. It’s all about your audience. Wow them with your content.
You can still post as you go along – you will always have post ideas that you need to get out there and then. But plan it where you can. It’s a form of marketing and you will get the most from it if you plan.
If you have had enough of managing your social media and would like to pass it over to someone who can make it awesome for you, then get in contact. We’d love to help.