To Schedule Or Not To Schedule?

Your guide on how to batch and schedule content to make your life a heck of a lot easier!

Should I or should I not schedule my social media content? One of the top questions I get asked on the reg.

Finding the time to create and post content is one of the biggest challenges for business owners. If you are someone that has to work inside a workplace like a hairdresser, for example, you cannot stop mid-haircut and say

“Oh sally I just need to stop for a second and do my daily facebook post”

We are all busy people, not only are we cranking life in all directions to be a business owner, we have lives, partners, pets, kids, a house to maintain and somewhere a social life?  Yeah, right you say *insert hysterical laughing here*

So being able to batch and schedule content becomes really important to be able to keep up with the demands of needing to be consistent on your socials so you can grow grow grow and become the biz babe juggernaut that you deserve to be.

Espesh considering that we have so many platforms these days it’s cray cray.  Facespace, The gram, Linkedin, Pinterest, Twitter, Meetup.  So that begs the question:

‘Which platform do I focus on and how the heck do I keep up?’

So here are my top tips for which platforms you should be focusing on, how to batch and schedule content PLUS my top tips for scheduling apps for the small biz babe.

Which Social Platform To Focus On?

This is easy, peasy.  Whichever platform your ideal client is hanging out on!  You can check reports like the Sensis report to get more info on this AND make sure that you have done your dream client profile.  You can download my FREE Client Profiling Tool HERE.

If you are unsure where to start then Facebook and Instagram are the most obvious choices.  Try and test your content across both, see which platform responds the best and then up the ante on your strategy for that platform.

If business people are your ideal client then Linkedin is a platform that is just increasing in power.  BUT I find with a majority of my clients that want to utilise LinkedIn that their strategy can need to be altered for Linkedin in comparison to Facebook and Instagram.

For example, my focus on Facebook & Instagram is to connect with the business owner and people I can collaborate with.  On LinkedIn, because it has such a professional user profile I am wanting to connect with industries like Real Estate Agents, Brokers etc that need a social presence with the purpose of either A. Connecting with the person or B.  Connecting with the agency owner with a view to facilitating corporate workshops.

Determine the platform you want to have your main focus, have a secondary focus and then either don’t bother with the rest OR use them as a place to have a presence.  (More to come in the scheduling app recommendation about how to do that easily)

Batching Content

This is something that can make your life a heck of a lot easier.  Batch your content!

When you are taking images – Take a bunch no-one knows you took them that day or not!

When you are creating a piece of content – Create the re-purposed content then too.  EG.  Creating a blog, create the social media posts, email marketing, story sequence and save it all in a folder so you can re-purpose with ease.  Plus it will be fresh in your mind!

When making images on apps like Canva or Video Content – Create a bunch at once and save it into topic folders.

When saving stock images – Save 20 not 2

Schedule a week’s content, not one day’s.

If you do each post one at a time then it gets so damned laborious!  Do more while you are on that roll and save a bunch of time

Scheduling Content

The BIG question – should you schedule content?

The answer is this.  If you need to be scheduled so it will happen then DO THAT!

If you have the ability to leave some room for spontaneity then I would encourage you to do so.  Then you can post something you FEEL like when the creative juices are flowing or you are inspired.

BUT not at the expense of not posting at all.  If not scheduling means it doesn’t happen then consistency is way more important than spontaneity.   For your social media marketing to work then you need to be consistent.  Pages with less than 3 posts a week can be flagged as inactive which means that you run the risk of even less of your followers seeing your content.

The big thing is here – Make it as easy as possible for yourself babe, we have so much to do if you need to spend an hour scheduling a week’s posts then DO THAT.

My only disclaimers are this:

Be aware of what you have scheduled.  If you have a post scheduled that conflicts with a natural disaster or some major news event that happens you will need to delete it or re-schedule it you don’t want to be insensitive on a day where it could be inappropriate.

If you feel inspired POST that, your individual flair and personal branding are so important.  You can move a scheduled post along.

For those that want my personal routine.  I am probably not the best person to model here lol.  I am a very intuitive person, I cook without recipes, I don’t commit to much of a routine in case something happens and I need to go with the flow.  So I mix it up.  Most of the time I post on the fly with what I am inspired with and I schedule when I am busy and know I won’t get time to that day, like if I have back to back clients.

My Top Scheduling Apps

There are SO many scheduling apps around and you can honestly find your Nirvana of scheduling apps outside of my top picks.  But I have tried and tested MANY and have settled on 2 that I have total love heart eyes for.  They make my life easier.  They have amazing features.  Most of all they work for me, which means they should work for most small biz babes.

My disclaimers here are:

Facebook Business Pages – Facebook biz pages still don’t like posting apps with the algorithm. So post directly to your biz page or schedule inside the page itself.  (Where you go to click share now, hit the drop down and it will let you schedule!)

Instagram is now FINALLY letting you auto-post from apps, the jury is out about whether this affects reach.  Try and test between auto-post & push through posts and see what works for you.

Buffer

If you need to post to multiple platforms then Buffer is my go to.  Reason being is that I have 3 Facebook Groups, Pinterest and Linkedin that I use on my Buffer account. 

My FAVOURITE reason that I use Buffer is that you can customise your post for each social network and still post at the same time. 

PLUS there is a desktop version and I work from my laptop 95% of the time.

So here are some features of Buffer for y’all to check out:

Features:

• Add Facebook Groups
• Connect to Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, IG, Facebook & Google +
• Customise your message for each social network
• Add emojis easily with a : then search for the name
• Auto post to IG
• Tag other Facebook pages in a post
• Desktop & mobile app
• Link shortening

Pricing:

• 14 Day Free Trial
• 3 Social Accounts – Free
• 8 Channels – $15 per month

Planoly

For Instagram, Planoly is HANDS DOWN my fave.  So yes I use Buffer AND Planoly.  But you will see why Planoly is da bomb for those that use the gram.  I have total love heart eyes for this app.

My FAVOURITE reason is that you can plan your feed so you can upload pics and move them around before you post them to see if they fit in your feed.  For those that have a colour scheme and want a pretty feed this is THE app for you.

Second fave is that you can save groups of hashtags and copy them into your post with a click.

Third favourite and this is going to be a GAME CHANGER – You can schedule IG Stories.  Oh yeah you heard me, schedule stories!  So if you are using an app like Over to create beautiful Story images (remember the tip of batching content) then upload your pics to Planoly and schedule to Stories.  The only downside is that you cannot autopost a Story BUT hey a push through is enough for me bro.

Here are some other features of Planoly for y’all to check out:

Features:

• Plan your feed
• Word count
• User tag count
• Hashtag count
• Save hashtag groups
• Schedule or autopost
• Schedule to stories (not auto-post)
• Unlimited images with all paid plans
• Analytics including best performing posts
• Repost within the app
• Free stock images

Pricing:

• Solo – 1 account $9USD per month
• Duo – 2 accounts $19USD per month

So there you have it my practical tips to create, save and schedule your content so your amazing stuff is getting to your audience consistently and you can shine the f*ck up online.

Happy Scheduling Girls!