No matter how you feel about social media personally, as a business owner you have to embrace it to a certain extent. At least, you do if you want to fully leverage these free marketing channels, and what business doesn’t want to do that?!
Social media accounts may be free (ads are another story), but you do have to invest time or pay someone like Bruce & Eddy to handle the social media posting for you (shameless plug). If you’re going the DIY route it’s all about minimizing the time it takes to create and post content. Let’s focus on the posting aspect for now.
A Word About Social Posting Frequency
Before we get into the streamlining part, it’s worth taking a moment to discuss the frequency of posting on social media. If you only had to do it once every week or two like a good blog post, social media would seem a lot less overwhelming.
To fully make use of social media platforms you have to be a regular participant. You have to post regularly, comment on other posts, connect with users, follow users and respond to followers. The biggest task in that lineup is posting regularly.
How often you should post for your business to see a benefit depends on a few key factors. First is the social media platform itself. Your industry and target market are also important considerations. Your goal for using social media is something else that impacts how often you should post.
The general suggestion for posting is:
Facebook – 1+ times a day
Instagram – 3+ posts a week
LinkedIn – 2-5 times a week
Pintrist – 1+ pin a day
TikTok – 1+ times a day
X – 3-7 times a week
YouTube – 1 video or 3-5 shorts a week
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is jumping in head first and opening accounts on every platform. While it doesn’t hurt to establish an online account to have a presence, as you can see above, really making use of a social media platform requires effort.
That’s why we suggest choosing 1-3 of the most appropriate platforms for your business and building those out before getting active on other accounts.
Now, let’s get into the streamlining part!
Put Social Media Posting on Your Work Calendar
This is the simplest recommendation on the list, but it is highly effective at streamlining the social media posting process. Basically, anything that you create a schedule around is more likely to get done. And the things that we make a regular habit of doing get done.
For that reason, the first thing to try is putting social media posting on your work calendar. Decide how often you are going to post and to what accounts. Then jot out a posting schedule for the month based on that.
It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or complex. Just adding it to a Google calendar so it gets factored into the work day is enough to make regular posting easier to get done. If you want a tool that’s more specific to content scheduling, like CoSchedule or Monday.com.
Make Use of AI Posting Tools
Remember that earlier post when we were discussing how to take your first baby steps into AI? Well, this is a project where you can start testing the water with artificial intelligence.
A lot of web builders, content management systems and AI content generators now give you the option to create a social media post and publish it right when you release a new landing page or blog post. Even Canva has tools for creating and scheduling posts through their platform.
Usually, the AI tool will auto generate the social media post by grabbing a juicy snippet from the new page that it thinks is click-worthy or summarizing the page. You can then edit it before publishing, and you’re done.
Make Multi-Purpose Social Media Posts
Each platform is unique, but a single post can be tweaked for use across various social media platforms if you put some forethought into it. The more you are able to make multiple-purpose social media posts, the quicker the posting process will be.
There are social media management platforms that can help you repurpose content and posts. But they come at a price, so you have to consider how much time they actually save you. Another point to consider is which social media platforms are supported by the management platform.
Create a Resource for Reusable Content
Social media posts aren’t like web pages. Duplicate content isn’t as big an issue. Whenever possible you can repurpose content so posts go up quicker. Some content that can be reused to streamline posting include:
- Lists of hashtags
- Location info
- Prompt to comment or take an action
But to repurpose content you need to have it readily accessible. For that reason, it’s a good idea to create a Google doc or spreadsheet (Word doc is fine too) that includes reusable content that’s well organized so it’s easy to find and plug into posts. The more plug and play you can make social media posting, the easier it will be to keep up a good posting frequency.
Create and Schedule Social Media Posts in Batches
Creating and posting one post at a time isn’t the most efficient process. The streamlined solution is to create and schedule social media posts in batches. Sit down at the start of the month and give yourself time to create posts for the next few weeks. Schedule the posts to be released at certain times, and then sit back until the process needs to be repeated in a few weeks.
Post From a Safe Distance
Whenever possible, schedule posts from a safe distance so you don’t get sucked into the social media vortex. It’s inevitable. If you go onto Facebook, Instagram or YouTube to make a post it’s almost always followed by scrolling or clicking on something interesting and before you know it more than a half hour has gone by, maybe more.
It’s simply a matter of distraction that eats into your productivity once the posting is done. Keep the social media use to leisure time by scheduling through a content management or social media management platform instead.
If all that sounds like something you’d rather have a professional web company handle, then let’s chat about it! Bruce & Eddy can set you up with a social media posting plan that’s cost effective and frequent enough to generate buzz, gain followers and make connections.