Scheduling Social Media: Why It’s a Must + How to Make it Easier

This post was originally published on October 8th, 2015. It was updated on December 7th, 2017. It’s no secret that managing your social media presence is a lot of work.

There’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and maybe even a few others that you’re using.

These days, we’re everywhere on the web and it takes time and effort to effectively run each of the platforms we’re utilizing. From the outside looking in, it might seem easy, but there’s actually a lot of work involved.

That’s why scheduling social media content in advance has become so crucial for business owners. Otherwise, we may wind up forgetting to post or throwing updates together at the last minute.

And that’s simply not cool.

Two Reasons Why Scheduling Social Media is Helpful

If you aren’t convinced that scheduling social media is the way to go, I have a couple reasons that might change your mind.

1. It Creates Consistency

We’ve all been guilty of getting wrapped up in other things and completely forgetting to post on social media. Even I’ve been guilty of this!

However, if you start slacking on your posts, you’ll notice a decline in followers and engagement. For a great social media presence, you need to be consistent with posting new content.

By scheduling your posts in advance, you don’t have to worry about forgetting to post or being attached to your laptop 24/7. You can schedule everything and then go on about your day.

2. You Create Better Content

When you plan updates, you give yourself more time to think them through and carefully craft them. And let’s be real, your audience wants to see your best content.

Instead of throwing posts together, you’re able to be strategic about what you share. You can think them through and tailor each message to the platform you’re sharing it on. Strategic posting ultimately helps you see better results with your efforts.

How to Make Scheduling Social Media Easier

There are a couple things you can do to make your life a little easier when it comes to scheduling social media content. After all, it doesn’t have to be this daunting task that you dread!

Create an Editorial Calendar

Odds are, you have an editorial calendar for your blog, but are you using one for social media? If not, you should consider creating one!

By having an editorial calendar, you can plan your content in advance based on the things going on in your business, holidays, etc. After all, you don’t want to be scrambling to put together holiday social media content at the last minute, do you?

You can get started by jotting down ideas of topics you’d like to discuss, sources you can curate content from, marketing messages, and more. Then, create a balanced schedule. For example, seven tweets per day could look like this: three posts of your own blog content, three pieces of curated content, and one promotional post.

Batch Your Scheduling

Do you sit down every morning and schedule your social media content for the day ahead? If you do, it’s really not the most productive away to go about things.

Scheduling social media is much easier when you batch the task. Instead of taking time out of every day, you can block off time once per week and schedule an entire week’s worth of content in one sitting.

This then takes the pressure off because you don’t have to worry about social media posts for the remainder of the week. You can then direct your focus to the other important tasks on your to-do list.

Personally, I sit down first thing every Monday morning and schedule all of my social media content for the week ahead. If you’re feeling really ambitious, you can certainly schedule more, but this is all I can handle!

My Favorite Tool: Buffer

I’ve actually used a number of tools over the years to help with scheduling social media, including Hootsuite and MeetEdgar. And when it comes down to it, Buffer is my favorite.

Why?

It’s simple. Their website and iOS app are both user-friendly, which makes scheduling content a breeze. Plus, I love the ability to have an extension right in Google Chrome (pictured above). And their Power Scheduler is a must for me whenever I’m scheduling blog content.

Having built-in analytics also allows me to easily see which posts have performed the best. Then, I can actually “Re-Buffer” those posts and add them to my queue again with the click of a button.

And another great selling feature of Buffer? It’s affordable. If I’m being totally honest, I don’t want to pay a fortune for scheduling social media. I don’t feel like I’m breaking the bank by paying for Buffer’s services.

(Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with Buffer in any way, nor was this content sponsored. But hey, you can totally hit me up, Buffer!)

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