Written by Why You Need a Social Media Scheduler
Let’s face it, social media is an important and powerful tool for marketers in the modern digital age.
Sure, you may not like it (I’m in that camp), or you may love it but find that it eats up more time than it should (were you posting at 2am?!).
In either case, it has done an amazing job, allowing small businesses to get their message out faster, reach a large audience, and generate qualified leads.
Well, what’s the problem?
Social media, no matter how you look at it, is time-consuming.
Posting in real time allows you to engage with your audience and will boost your impressions and overall engagement rate…ideally.
Realistically – if you are a small business owner – engaging in real time means you are not meeting with clients, not working on your business (yes – social media engagement is marketing but if you don’t have a product to market…), and most of all – not closing sales and bringing in new revenue.
Organic social media is a long game strategy. You can post, engage, increase your reach, and gain hundreds of thousands of followers, but as one influencer learned the hard way – that doesn’t guarantee you will make money.
An Instagram star has sparked a discussion about how powerful social media influencers really are after failing to sell 36 T-shirts to her 2.6 million followers.
Ok then…what’s the point?
Well as mentioned above, social media is a necessary evil for lead generation and social media proof; BUT, it isn’t for those seeking an immediate return (that’s where paid marketing ads come in).
A social media scheduler allows you to regain time while still being relevant to your audience.
It blends both worlds by taking out the real-time need of generating and posting content, allowing you to quickly jump on and engage when your scheduled post drops.
What is a social media scheduler anyway?
A social media scheduler is a tool that can help automate the process of managing social media accounts by scheduling posts ahead of time.
This creates time to focus on more important tasks and provides more opportunities to engage with your clients/audience.
Social media schedulers provide these benefits:
- It allows you to save time by creating posts ahead of time.
- You are able to focus your hashtags, message, and reach a broader audience without feeling rushed.
- You will have more control over your marketing strategy – allowing you to test and refine your message.
- The time gained from prescheduling allows you to provide more time to your clients.
So…why should I use a scheduler?
- Scheduling posts and other social media activities takes less time than doing it manually every day.
- When done right, automation can help you save money and improve the quality of your social media content.
- You will have more control over what gets shared on your social media channels by choosing the exact times you want to post it yourself.
- A scheduler will make sure you don’t forget to share content when it matters most such as special events or expiring deals.
- With automated posting, your ads will always be live and ready to engage with new potential leads.
What Schedulers Would You Recommend?
First and foremost, Later is my absolute favorite for one-off scheduling (meaning you are not requeuing your posts). It is the scheduler I use for my business and love it.
They just added TikTok so you can now schedule in Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok! I personally use their free account but I have seen their reporting via a paid account and it is unmatched!
For requeuing purposes, I also use Socialbee.io. It integrates with the majority of the big hitters (I do not use TikTok so I am not sure if it is included) and allows you to pull in RSS feeds, import social media for scheduling, provides reporting (somewhat limited), but allows you to beincredibly organized with categories and their scheduling calendar.
Best of all, you can have your posts uploaded and queued for approval. So if you have a copywriter and/or a designer for your content but you want to review it first, it can sit in a queue and can be approved with the simple click of a button.
Recently, I started using Sociamonials. I grabbed it via AppSumo (I love AppSumo for lifetime software deals – if you have never heard of it, stop what you are doing right now and click here) for creating viral giveaways and sweepstakes but you can also use it for regular social media scheduling. I just started using it but so far I do like it!
Here are a few others:
With a scheduler, do I still have to worry about engagement?
Yes! We have moved away from the world where it is one or the other.
If you find yourself engaging a lot but not posting content, your social media accounts are not benefiting from your efforts.
By engaging AND consistently posting content, you increase the reach/impressions of your posts to your target audience by helping Instagram, Facebook put your content in front of those who are most likely to interact.
If you are only posting but not engaging, you will begin to see your engagement level drop and your reach be affected by your absence on social media.
By combining the two forces of pre-scheduling and engaging, you are able to solidify a balance and lock in your position as an influencer/expert/go to resource in your niche.
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