“I’m so busy!

I just don’t have time to tackle social media today…

Ah, sure I’ll do it tomorrow!”

Do you recognise yourself here?

[bctt tweet=”3 Reasons You Need Social Media Scheduling In Your Life. #socialmedia” username=”feedalpha”]

Or how about,

“I’m going on holiday for two weeks and I don’t want to have to tear myself away from the family to do my social media, but my brand can’t just disappear for that long!”

Or this:

“My audience is on social media late in the evening, but I can’t face getting online to post at that time when I’m winding down after a busy day.”

Your social media accounts must be active and regularly updated to keep your followers’ interest, but you need to preserve some kind of work-life balance.

advantages of scheduling your social media

This is where scheduling flies in like a superhero to remove those headaches and allow you to concentrate on your “real” job.

1. Find lost time!

Saving time is the biggest reason to have a schedule for your social media activities.

Yes, there will be an initial time investment to build your schedule, but once it’s done, you will find time you didn’t even realise was lost!

You can use one of the schedule templates that are available online and do the whole thing manually.

That is a time-consuming way of going about it,

and you need to WIN BACK some time.

The first step is to pick the right scheduling tool for you, then sigh with relief – no more posting individually on each platform; an end to logging in and out of all your accounts.

Safe in the knowledge that regular content is coming your targets’ way,

you can use the social media time in your working day to do what the platforms allow,

that is listen to and engage directly with your audience.

So, yeah, Gary, that all sounds great but how do I do it?

First up you are going to need a constant stream of quality content.

A schedule is no good unless you have engaging stuff in it for your customers…

I tend to share a lot of info across Social Media about Technology – once a nerd always a nerd, right?

Big Data & Analytics is something I always read about and share when I find something worth sharing.

This is where Feedalpha shines. Type in a keyword and get back a list of trending and relevant posts in seconds – perfect for my techie audience.

how to find good content to share on social media

Now that I have the content I need to start thinking about my schedule.

You just need to pick your favorite posts, hit the schedule button and that’s it.

We have a built-in calendar that gives you a detailed or helicopter view of your content, the channel it’s on and the time it is due to go out.

social media calendar

Above you will see an overview of some scheduled posts I have for the next 2 weeks.

When you click the overview tab you get to see all your connected accounts and check out your coverage.

If you click into one of your accounts you can drag and drop updates into different days or time slots.

How cool is that?

2. Productivity boost

By scheduling your posts, you will definitely increase productivity.

If you work alone, you will be able to prepare content in advance.

The content is likely to be better because you are not multi-tasking while you’re doing it or trying to do it in a rush, when you’re much more inclined to look at something that’s not quite right but think “It’ll do!”.

If you have a team, you’ll be able to allocate staff to work on the content you are planning.

Just make sure they are fully briefed on your messages and deadlines.

Here’s to avoiding that mad panic on publishing day!

Either way, you will be able to balance out your upcoming content and make sure you are posting a mix of helpful, interesting, non-promotional content (blogs, articles, advice) with calls to action to get people to buy/subscribe or whatever your goal is.

Scheduling makes it much easier to execute a campaign because you can plan out the order of your messages.

With Feedalpha we let you plan up to a month in advance and sharing your own content is simple.

You just hit the ‘New Post’ button, paste in the link, and you can share it out to one or all of your accounts at the same time.

use own blog posts on social media

This way you are getting your own important news out to every Network at once.

Plan these ahead of time and set them to post automatically at exactly the right time – regardless of timezones.

3. Consistency

Because you’re likely to be scheduling a number of posts in one sitting, it is easier to ensure consistency across your messaging. And that is gold.

A schedule keeps your social media presence regular and puts an end to the all-too-familiar cycle of quiet periods followed by borderline spamming as you catch up with all the content you didn’t post!

Consistency also helps with engagement.

The more you post the more potential reach you get.

finding viral content

All social networks are managed by complex algorithms. There is no way to beat the system.

Being consistent and posting engaging content is the best way to work with them.

The more people engage with your content the more people will see it.

By using a schedule you can load up a months’ worth of updates in one go.

The next time you are too busy to look at your social media accounts you don’t have to worry because the content is reaching your audience anyway…

Yes, but!…

Scheduling works very well for evergreen content such as articles and blogs you can prepare or find in advance, or status updates on known future events or topics as well as your own marketing campaigns.

But remember to balance the planned stuff with a little spontaneity.

Posts with trending content about current information, new developments, breaking news (or just your current mood) are important too.

You need to make sure that your scheduling doesn’t stop you being relevant.

With a little bit of preparation, scheduling will help you to keep on top of your social media messages and allow you to get on with running the business.

Just think, no more sneaking out of meetings to make sure something goes out or writing those middle-of-the-night posts to catch an audience in a different time zone.

No more guilt about going on holiday!

Just relax and let the scheduling tool do the posting for you.

Oh yeah, and it’s FREE to try for 14 days 🙂

Gary Evans

Gary Evans

Gary is the Founder of Feedalpha. He has a background in AI, Data Analytics, SEO, Digital Strategy and Web Design.