Scheduling Content Ahead Of Time On Your Social Media Platforms

Today I want to share with you the thing that keeps me on track, helps me to never forget a day of content,
and it helps me to stay accountable to my audience with regular postings.

I schedule ahead of time 90% of my content. Most of it I schedule in Sprout Social and the same content is being sent to both Twitter and Facebook. This makes it very easy to get things in place ahead of time, especially on very busy days. If I am going to be traveling, gone for a weekend, etc, I can schedule my content and not worry about it.

I make a committment to check in on my page twice per day, nearly every day, for 10 minutes each time. This takes only 20-30 minutes per day. Engaging with people, talking back and having relationship with them is just as important, if not MORE important, than anything else. To be honest with you, if we don't have 20 minutes per day to interact and have relationship with our clients, we should rethink being a business owner. I'll talk back to people, answer questions, delete any soliciting that someone might be making on my page and other content that shouldn't be there.

Scheduling content should never replace listening to your clients, being active on your page or as an excuse to 'schedule ahead for a month and forget it.' We want to always stay connected with our clients, but we don't have to be on social media 24/7. When people tell me they were on social media interacting for hours, I have no clue what they're doing. I've built a multi-million dollar brand checking in a few times per day, for 10 minutes or so at a time. Now I have a few staff members who come onto my page and help out. So if you've ever used the excuse of 'It will take all of my time!' for not building a big page, you no longer have any excuses. If I can do this with over a million people on my pages, you can too! Just a few times per day, 10 minutes at a time. No worries! Feel free to take Sunday or a day off. Just make sure you're consistent and that things are scheduled ahead of time so even if you're not talking back, there's fresh digital content and posts everydat.

When I have a long post, or want to post videos, I'll go ahead and use Facebook's scheduler. But the majority of my content is scheduled ahead of time, on my iPhone through Sprout Social.

I schedule 3-7 days at a time, but never schedule any more than that. I don't want to get out of touch with my clients. If I do more than this, I start to  feel it in my spirit, and I'll also miss the real-time opportunities that present themselves to be the solution to a problem, to be an encouragement and to win a client's business.

Another tool I've used before is Hootsuite. I have found however that the data reports, real time analytics and data mining capabiities on Sprout Social are much better, and more reliable. 

If you're just starting out and feel like you can only do a few posts per day, at the very least schedule at these times:

8 am EST
12 noon EST
4pm EST
8 pm EST

Your engagement will be lower if you schedule less, but at least this is a good start. You can change the time zone to be your correct location.

Scheduling ahead of time helps you to make sure your best content is being posted, rather than winging it when you feel like it. Consistently creating great content is a big key to social media marketing success.

With love,

Sandi Krakowski