Frank Kenny explains how to post to social media even when you’re too busy.
Are you sometimes so crunched for time that you fail to post to social media when you meant to?
Most membership professionals are that busy.
But that doesn’t mean your social media content shouldn’t get posted.
I would like to share a quick story with you of how I discovered a strategy (and a few helpful tools) that allowed me to make sure my social media posting got done even though my days went sideways. Best of all, I gained back hours of my time.
When social media was just taking off, the advice of the day was to post and engage several times each day. Some days, my schedule would allow me to do this. But most days, life and business interfered. The phone would ring or an important email or text would take me off track.
It was frustrating because I had the best of intentions and the desire to be helpful and visible on social media. But real time posting throughout the day just didn’t turn out to be realistic for a membership professional.
Around this time, I started to see some new “advice of the day” that it was OK to schedule out posts. It didn’t mean I was being impersonal, or abusing trust. The key component was to still engage real time (when notifications came in) because giving your attention to people is key to relationship building.
This was an epiphany for me. Schedule in advance; engage when I received notifications.
So, I tested a lot of systems for scheduling my posts. I won’t go into naming them here, but almost every system had drawbacks such as formatting problems or algorithm penalties from the platforms. Some of the tools were expensive too.
It looked like I would have to go back to posting in real time.
But then some new scheduling tools came online that made consistent posting a breeze.
One is the native scheduling ability that a couple of the platforms now have. For instance, on Facebook, it is easy to schedule out your page posts using Facebook’s own tool. On Twitter, you can schedule your tweets using their Tweetdeck tool.
But if you really want a powerful third-party scheduler, check out smarterqueue.com. You can schedule your posts and even recycle your evergreen content. Talk about saving time.
With SmarterQueue, I have found that no matter how sideways my day goes, or even my week, my content gets out to my primary social platforms. This creates awareness, keeps me top of mind, and dependably sends traffic to my website.
Check out these tools and schedule out your posts. But don’t forget to engage in real time.
Disclosure: This is not an affiliate link. I have no financial interest in SmarterQueue. I just want you to get back hours of your time each week and be more effective at social media.
Frank J. Kenny is an internationally recognized author, professional speaker, and consultant. He is on the faculty of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Organization Management (IOM). He has taught social media, digital marketing, and technology strategies to business audiences from around the world.