Checking your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn feeds, sending tweets, uploading Instagram photos, adding a post to your website; it’s an exhaustive list of activities you need to perform to keep up-to-date with your social media accounts. Adding social media to your small business activities can create a lot more work, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Including regular content in your social media feed keeps the site active, and search engines love activity. A simple way to make sure you’re always distributing content is to schedule. Set yourself some time once a week where you pre-plan your social media updates.
Social media management programs like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite allow you to view feeds from, and add updates to various social media networking sites using one application. These programs also allow you to create search columns, and the big timesaver: schedule your updates.
Sometimes you may have several tweets or status updates that need to be posted in one day. By scheduling these updates you can span them out during the day or week without clogging up your followers’ feeds with your updates. Scheduling updates to your social media platforms also allows you to work when you want to. Status updates can be created late in the evening and scheduled for distribution at 10 a.m., which may be a more effective time to reach your audience.
It’s up to you how often you want to slate your posts to go out, but make sure you check your scheduled items on a regular basis to make sure the information is still relevant.
When you schedule an update in Tweetdeck it will automatically create a new column for scheduled items, allowing you to easily browse the column to assess if the update is going out on the right day at the correct time.
If Facebook is the only network your business is using you may want to skip the management programs and schedule directly from Facebook. To schedule a status update for your Facebook Business Page simply click the clock symbol that appears below the text of your update. Select your required dates and times then “Schedule” your status update. This method can also be used for adding back dated status updates.
To view scheduled updates for your Facebook Business Page select “Edit Page” from the admin panel, then select “Use Activity Log” from the drop down.
If your website content management system is WordPress you have the perfect platform to integrate your website with your social media platforms. Adding a post to your connected WordPress website can automatically distribute a tweet, Facebook post or e-mail campaign, all with one click.
Now that you’ve got your online media scheduled take some time to get out there and be active.
