Nov 5, 2015

By: Chelsea Haley, DKI Ventures, LLC

One of the main reasons businesses don’t leverage social media in their marketing efforts is that they don’t have the time. However, knowing the strategies of how to post, and utilizing a calendar or some online scheduling assistant makes it fairly simple to market your brand and grow your business through social media marketing.

Schedule

Consider developing a calendar of social media posts or a list of content, relevant to your industry. Plan for big company events, launches, volunteer days and holidays.

If you want to schedule posts on multiple platforms in advance, there are several free or inexpensive programs online you can use to strategically schedule posts. Most of these also have a mobile app, which you can access to schedule or edit a scheduled post while you’re away from a computer. Here are a few of the platforms we like:

Scheduling posts will allow you to be more strategic and will save you from the headache of scrambling at the last-minute. However, it’s also important to monitor and be a part of the social media conversations related to breaking or buzz-worthy news events that will be trending on social media, especially those related to your industry or impacting your clients.  For example, say you are a hotel property manager, and there’s flooding in your area. It would be wise to update your followers on social media that you are still open for business. This is not only helpful for your current followers, but it’s also a way for others that don’t currently follow you, but are tracking that news event, to find you.

Although you can schedule many of your social posts, it’s also important to be relevant and timely with your content. The key, overall, is to be proactive and strategic with most of your content, while still having the ability to be reactive when current events warrant it.

Optimal Timing

While you schedule your posts, take into consideration the ideal posting days and times that have the most traffic. Some outlets are more popular during work hours to stay up to date with news and weather, while others are more commonly accessed during non-work hours, or during commute time, for leisure time or job hunting.

For example, Twitter is often accessed throughout the day for breaking news and occurrences. However, according to BufferApp, early morning hours tend to receive the most clicks on tweets. Our understanding is that people are trying to stay informed and capture daily news before work. They want to start their day “smarter” and in the know. However, the same study from BufferApp showed that on average, evenings are the times when your tweets receive the most favorites and retweets.

On the other hand, Chartbeat reported an increase in social media engagement overall is in the afternoon after work hours and evenings when people have more time to browse the networks, and want to relax. With that said, according to Chron, LinkedIn is not commonly accessed on Mondays or Fridays when the week or weekend is just beginning.

Note that these are general recommendations only, and are subject to change. The ideal posting/tweeting times can vary greatly depending on your audience, your industry, and your brand. Consider checking your page analytics for when you receive the highest engagement. It is also suggested to experiment with different times of the day and days of the week, also taking holidays into account. You may find that the busiest times on each platform aren’t always the best times to post, since you’re competing with a higher volume of posts published at the same time.

Social media, like other forms of marketing, is part art and part science. Although it’s good to follow some general guidelines and monitor engagement data, it’s also critical to be flexible and creative with your efforts.

Please comment below, and let us know what works best for your business.