6 reasons you should schedule your social media content

You know what we hear a lot of in our line of work? “I don’t have time to manage my social media.”

To be honest with you, we get it. Our feedback from more than 300 different small businesses we coached over the past three years revealed business owners were spending more than two hours a week struggling with their social media. That’s 4.3 days of the year wondering “what do I post.”

No wonder small business owners say they don’t have time for social media!

We have good news – you don’t need to be sitting in front of the computer wondering what to post anymore.

We’ve made you a content calendar which has 52 weeks of content prompts, so you aren’t left wondering what to write again.

Still not convinced? Let us give you six reasons why you should be scheduling your content.

1. Good social media content makes you money

We’re not even biased when we say this, social media is a good cost to your business.

Marketing drives sales and sales brings the money through the door – and we’re yet to meet a business owner who couldn’t do with a few more high-paying customers.

For most businesses, the only cost of organic social media is time, which is likely your preferred currency of choice too.

2. Scheduling social media content saves you time

If you’ve been to one of our LIVE sessions you will have heard us use the grocery shopping analogy.

Just as if you did the grocery shopping once a week, you might spend 40 minutes gathering ingredients. But if you shop every day you’ll spend 20 minutes and twice as much to get the same result – dinner on the table.

Social media is exactly the same.

Pre-planning your content is the only way to speed up the curation and creation of content – sitting down to assign captions to your business images and videos.

If writing the captions is your sticking point, we wrote this blog post to help you DIY. Alternatively, let us help you on your way with our content calendar with 52 weeks of content prompts to save you the headache.

3. Your social media content becomes undoubtedly better

When you sit down to write content in advance, you’ll have the benefit of a birds-eye view of the week, fortnight or month ahead rather than working in 24-hour cycles.

This allows you to treat your social media as a marathon, not a sprint.

With a helicopter view, you’ll be able to see these key international dates in advance and prepare content ahead of time.

Take it from us. It’s too late to create Mother’s Day content the first Sunday of May – you need to be thinking of getting that perfect photo to share, months in advance.

4. You don’t have to be online to post

We’re surely not the only ones who don’t want to be online on a Saturday night sending our posts into the wild.

Automation is key and social media means you’re active when you don’t want to be – after hours, weekends, when you’re on holidays, when you’re out of range – you name it.

Scheduling gives you the opportunity to show up online 24/7 without you having to press ‘go’.

5. You get oversight of how it looks in your feed

For our Instagram lovers out there, you’ll be happy to know most scheduling tools provide a visual view of how your content will look in your feed.

Forget uploading two sunsets next to each other and ruining your aesthetic, with a little planning.

A visual-view will allow you to move content around in your feed, so your feed remains aesthetically pleasing.

Coordinate your feed according to colours, or like we do – one graphic design tile for every three squares to create a consistent feed of content.

6. Your social channels will lead with strategy

Last but not least, scheduling ahead of time will mean your social media is strategic – and isn’t what this is really about?

How can you possibly expect to be a strategic communicator when you don’t allocate enough time to do social media properly?

Strategic communication is not born out of rushed posts at 6pm at night while juggling the kids’ bath time and dinner.

It’s born out of dedicated time to think about connecting the right message, to the right audience at the right time.

You need to think like the Chief Marketing Officer of your company, not someone doing social media because someone said you had to.

As a starting point, define your target audience, write an online strategy, and create content pillars for your channels.

And of course, if you need a little help, there’s always our 52-week content planner, brimming with caption cures and content thought starters.

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