ORGANIZE // How to Plan and Organize Your Social Media Posts (+ Free Downloadable Worksheet!)
Social media is undoubtedly one of the best ways to connect with your audience (and tell them about what you’re working on), but with so many platforms to keep up on, one thing I often struggle with is remembering to post on all of them — and at the right times, to boot. It can be overwhelming, no? Of course, the easiest way to do this — and here I admit, I should totally take my own advice — is to get a calendar/schedule down, so that social media post planning becomes more automated. Here are a few ideas to help you streamline, organize, and plan posts on social media (including a free worksheet to help guide you!):
1. GET STRATEGIC
Just as you should create a plan for your blog, it’s a good idea to have something similar for your social media strategy. If you have a presence on multiple platforms, think about how you want to use them and how you want to connect with your audience on each one. If you don’t spend as much time on Instagram, it makes sense that you maybe only post there a few times a week (versus a few times a day, if you were especially active on it and had a very engaged audience). Same thing with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Google — figure out how you want to use each platform, because this will dramatically change how you plan and organize for each one (which saves you time and stress in the long run!). PSST! At the end of this post, I’ve included a free worksheet that can help you plan your content for the platforms you want to use.
2. SAVE CONTENT IDEAS
This is one thing I’ve done for link roundups on my personal blog and here on The Well, which would translate perfectly to social media content planning. In my browser (I use Chrome), I have a few different bookmark folders set up. When I’m browsing online and come across articles that I think would be of interest to my various audiences, I’ll star the page and save it to the appropriate folder. Setting up a system that allows you to save content ideas for social media can provide you with a bank of posts when you need them. You could create folders for your blog, and a separate one for social/non-blog platforms (this can help keep the content fresh/unique on specific platforms). I’ve heard of other people using products like Evernote to save specific web pages, but it’s all the same idea — create a place where you can store sharable content, making it easier to generate social posts down the line.
3. STUDY ANALYTICS
Same as with your blog, it’s worth taking a look at social media analytics to understand what types of posts do well, and more importantly, when your audience is spending time on each platform. Virtually all of the major social media platforms now have analytics dashboards (or at least third party sites that can analyze usage for you), and regardless of your individual analytics, many articles have been published discussing highest usage times on each platform. Be sure to take a look at our resources list at the end of this post to find out how you can access your analytics dashboards for the most popular social media platforms! Once you get a handle on when users are on a platform and what they like to see from you, you can…
4. GET SCHEDULING!
Armed with all the info above, it’ll hopefully become obvious when and what you should schedule on social media. CoSchedule is an awesome tool that integrates with WordPress blogs, and allows you to schedule social posts as well as blog post promotion. Latergram is an app that allows you to schedule Instagrams (it won’t post for you, but it pushes an alert to you when it’s time to post, with your picture all ready to go). TweetDeck and Hoot Suite are two great tools that allow you to schedule tweets. And of course, Facebook’s in-house post scheduler is a great tool to schedule content for your page feed.
Doing a little bit of planning around social media can really help you feel a lot more organized, and like you have a handle on how you’re using each platform! Tell me, do you have any other tips for staying organized with social media posts?
Image via Death to the Stock Photo
RESOURCES
How to find your analytics dashboard on…
Articles on the best times to post on social media:
Fast Company, “The Best and Worst Times to Post on Social Media”
Entrepreneur, “Post Smarter: The Best Times to Use Social Media Platforms”
PR Daily, “The Best Times to Post on Social Media”
DOWNLOAD OUR FREE SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY WORKSHEET HERE
(note: if you’ve already downloaded our free blog plan guide, this is a great worksheet to add to that!)
The post ORGANIZE // How to Plan and Organize Your Social Media Posts ( Free Downloadable Worksheet!) appeared first on The Well: The B Bar Blog.
