Social Media is a blessing for writers. Facebook, Twitter, and friends have opened up new channels for us to reach our audience, connect with colleagues and build our author brands. Managing these sites can however eat away at precious writing time. So how can we consistently keep up our online presence without it taking over?
One way is to schedule some of our posts. Whilst I'd like to point out that the beauty of social media is that it's SOCIAL, and therefore you should put an emphasis on interacting and engaging, some content can be scheduled to post.
Facebook has the built in feature that allows you to schedule posts directly on site. You just need to click on the clock icon below the status update and select year, month, day and time of when you'd like the post to be published and it'll be added to the activity feed of your page.
This feature is ideal for Facebook users but what if you're using other sites or more than one social media network?
Here's a quick look at some of the best tools for scheduling social media posts:
How do you schedule your social media posts? Which sites do you find most effective/easiest to use?
When it comes to social media marketing you need to have new content posted to your accounts on a regular basis. This doesn't mean you can't take some time off and enjoy the holidays though. In fact it's a good idea to take a break every once in a while and recharge your batteries.
Pre-holiday actions to take:
- Tie up any conversations your currently involved in. It's not good etiquette to leave people hanging.
- Decide if you'll be checking your accounts at all whilst you're away. Will you be checking in once or twice a day or will it be a total blackout until you return. This will have an effect on the type of posts you schedule for when your away. If you're not going to be checking in at all make sure you share content that doesn't need a follow up. Don't ask questions or evoke conversations.
Here's a quick guide to what you need to do in order to make sure you have fresh content posted regularly whilst you're away.
Your Blog
- Prepare blog posts in advance and schedule them for posting at a later date. Take some time to create some posts that you can program to publish to your blog whilst your away. Most blogging platforms have the options of scheduling posts without the need to be there in real-time to post them (blogger ad wordpress definitely do).
- Accept guest posts. Have other people write posts for your blog. Again these can be programmed to post on certain days and you also get the advantages of the guest blogger bringing new readers to your site.
- Set up your social media accounts to automatically share your new blog posts on publication. There are numerous applications and tools you can use to do this. An example of one I use is NetworkedBlogs.
Twitter, Facebook etc...
- Use a dashboard like HootSuite, Tweetdeck, Timely or SocialOomph to schedule status updates for when you're away. Although you don't need to post the same number of updates as you would normally, this will enable you to maintain an active presence even when your far away from your computer.
- Facebook now allows you to schedule posts directly from your page so you can easily set it up to share photo's, updates and other content for while you're on holiday without the need for third party sites.
These tips will help you maintain your online presence even when you're not actually present.
Facebook recently rolled out a new feature for public pages that allows you to schedule your posts in advance right from Facebook.
So why is this good news for writers and authors?
- Because it means you can schedule posts directly on Facebook without having to use third party applications. This is good news as it saves you the time of having to go to a different site and because third party applications are sometimes unreliable.
- Because it means you can master your Facebook marketing plan. On pages you have an insights feature that allows you to monitor which posts have received the most likes, shares, comments etc... You can use this information to schedule your posts for the highest impact.
- By programming posts in advance you free up more time for concentrating on your writing. Those 5 minutes 'just checking' on Facebook can easily turn into hours.
How to schedule a post
Set up your status update as usual but instead of clicking on 'post' click on the small clock face to the left.
You will then be able to schedule when the post will show on your timeline by selecting the year, month, day and time.
You can also use it to fill in past events by selecting a date and time from the past. The post will then automatically show on your timeline at that time. Perfect for filling in information about past publish works and events that you've taken part in.
Have you tried scheduling a post yet?
