Social Media Scheduling

It’s a new year, and you know what that means- the perfect time for New Year’s resolutions! When setting your resolutions, think larger than yourself; perhaps it’s time to better your business. What’s a better way to start than to begin your social media scheduling for the year?! We are sure that your brand has some sort of social media presence (we don’t know many who don’t), but why not make it great by planning killer content AHEAD of time? While this may sound overwhelming, it’s a lot easier than you may think. Given that social media scheduling is something that we have recently begun to do religiously, we believe that we can give you pointers for the task, so sit tight and stay tuned for some of our advice.

Designate Days

In order to make sure you are posting meaningful, purposeful content, we recommend designating particular days around certain subjects. For instance, maybe on Wednesdays you will post things centered around your company, while on Mondays, you will want to post more fun things or things that would be of interest to your target audience as they are easing into their week. Tuesday could be dedicated to things going on within your company’s industry, Thursday could be centered around people that are in communication with your brand and giving thanks and feedback to them, and Friday could be about what is going on in your company’s home city. Of course, these are just suggestions- use your own discretion about what is good for your unique company when designating days. In addition, you may also choose to continue posting throughout the weekend, if you’d like. The idea is to create a blueprint of what you would like your week of social media to look like so as to make finding content easier as well as providing relevant and useful information to your target audience.

Optimize Your Schedule

There are certain hours in the day that are better for engaging with your audience than others. In other words, just by choosing a particular time, more people will not only see your posts for themselves, but they are also more likely to interact with it and share it with even more people. These times can vary according to your business and your audience, but according to an infographic by KISSmetrics, titled “The Science of Social Timing”, here are some helpful guidelines:

Twitter:

• 5 pm is a good time to tweet for an optimal amount of retweets

• You are most effective when you tweet between 1-4 times an hour

• The best days to tweet tend to be during the middle of the week and on weekends

• To increase click-through rates, noon and 6 pm are the best times to tweet

Facebook:

• The best day to share is Saturday

• The most effective time to post is noon

• The best sharing frequency tends to be .5 per day

Pinterest:

• Traffic tends to build throughout the day, but trends vary by content type

• Most top pinners pin often- anywhere from 5-30 times per day!

• To test and track the best times to pin use Tailwind; it’ll also recommend times for your schedule based on when your audience has been most responsive.

Of course, as we previously mentioned, these times and days are not set in stone, and they can vary from company to company, so use these as guidelines, not absolute rules.

Choose A Program

Now that you have an idea of what you want to post as well as when you want a post, you’re ready to actually begin to schedule. The good news is that there are many programs out there to help you with this task. We are fond of HootSuite or TweetDeck for Twitter and Tailwind’s pin scheduling for Pinterest, but there are a number of good programs you may want to look at for your scheduling needs.

If you need help deciding, Ian Cleary has a great social media tools directory over at RazorSocial.

Hopefully these tips will help you get the start you need for a great year of social media content!

See anything we may have left out? Feel free to share in the comments below!

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