Social Media & Content Archives - Page 6 of 7

Advanced Techniques for Content Planning

By Nicola Balkind

Last time we looked at why you should schedule your social media updates, and tools to do so.

Today, let’s look at some more advanced techniques for content planning.

Schedule The Time In!

Schedue-ception!

Make time in your diary to schedule your updates.

It gets the busy-work out of the way and frees you up for other tasks.

Then, midweek, all you have to do is check in for the fun stuff: mentions, replies and chat.

I also find that planning blog topics ahead of time breaks the barrier to entry for actually getting the blog post written.

Make a Calendar

An example of what my content calendar looks like.

My secret weapon in defining social media strategies, and for day-to-day activity, is the content calendar.

This can be a simple spreadsheet with the dates laid out in on one axis and the channels on another.

This gives a clear view of your content – long-form and short – and how these updates fit together.

For example, each blog post might need an immediate tweet and Facebook post, and a secondary tweet the next day. Plot these out on the calendar for a clear view.

Having a monthly schedule also gives you the opportunity to outline bigger events, like a holiday or industry day. You can also include seasonal content here.

See Twitter’s #OwnTheMoment calendar for examples.

You can download an example of my social media content calendar here.

Create a Note-Taking System

If you’re using an organisational tool like use it to save any links you want to share and to make note of any blog posts or other important updates you need to share on social media that week.

For example…

Evernote

Evernote is a great place to store all your internet bits and bobs.

Saw a link that you loved and want to refer back to? Stick in Evernote.

Got a blog post idea while on the go? Draft it up in Evernote.

Having a system for keeping all of this internet ephemera can make your content planning really easy.

Pocket

Screen Shot 2014-07-29 at 13.25.37 — A peek at my Pocket Favourites – which I use as a link archive for content planning.

I do this using Pocket – which is my read it later app of choice.

When I like an article, I star it.

Then, when it comes to writing my Friday link list (it’s Reading Week – sign up here) I can jump into my favourites and quickly add them to the piece.

The same goes for sharing them via Buffer.

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&…

If you’re super organised, you can also write a comment as you save the note, to make quick work of slotting these items into your social media calendar.

Easy peasy!

Your Turn!

How do you organise your content? Are you a pro at content planning?

Leave me your tips or queries in a comment, tweet me @robotnic or email me with your thoughts/questions!

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How To Schedule Your Social Media Updates

By Nicola Balkind

Did you know that you can automate your social media updates?

If yes, are you doing it effectively?

Here are some of my tips for how to make the most of scheduling your tweets, Facebook posts, and other social updates.

Why Schedule Social Media Updates?

1. Scheduling your social media updates saves time.

Many of the projects I work on involve social media strategy and community management.

Why do those clients need me?

Well, it’s two-fold. One reason is that they don’t have the skills to establish their social media presence and grow an online community around their brand. Another reason is that they don’t have the time.

2. Scheduling your content makes it better.

Plotting out your social media updates gives you a clearer picture of what you’re putting out there.

Posting on a day-to-day basis is fine, but dipping in and out of your channels can become disorienting. You might forget to post an all-important reminder before a deadline passes, or you could be pushing your self-promotion activity ad nauseum.

Planning out your activity ahead will help you to clear up these issues, share content at the optimal times, and save time overall.

3. Scheduling = Optimising

Only about 46% of Twitter users log on at least once per day – and only 39% log in twice or more per day. (Source: Laura Roeder.)

You need to catch them while they’re online. More on this below.

Social Media Scheduling Tools

So now that you’re convinced that you should schedule your updates, and have a content calendar in place, it’s time to think about scheduling tools.

There are tons out there from full-scale decks like HootSuite (online) and TweetDeck (for desktop) to drag-and-drops like Buffer. I’d point you towards Buffer.

Buffer is a simple and easy-to-use client which defines a number of pre-determined times to disseminate your Tweets or other social media updates. As you add updates to your Buffer, it drops them into these time slots and pushes them out automatically.

You can also schedule specific times for updates to go out.

Bonus Tip:

My favourite aspect of Buffer – as with most apps I use – is the Chrome Extension.

This extension allows you to click a button on the page you are visiting, and it will automatically build an update with the page title and link.

I use this daily to share articles.

Click here to learn more about the Buffer Extension for Chrome.

Optimising Your Social Media Schedule

Tweriod Analysis form my own Twitter account

Once you have your social media calendar in place, and you’ve found a scheduling tool that works for you, the next step is optimising those scheduled time slots.

Optimising your social media updates ensures that you are sending information out into the world while your audience is listening.

While Buffer and HootSuite have in-built features which select the optimal times for your posts, services like Tweriod do one better: they analyse when your audience is online and active.

The best part? You can have Tweriod analyse your results and integrate them back into Buffer.

Need a Hand?

How do you handle your social media updates?

Are you sticking to a schedule, or is your content awry?

Learn more about my community management services, or get in touch to find out how I can help.