Author name: Louisa McGrath

Social media is all about connecting with your audience. You need to provide them with engaging social media posts and be engaged with it yourself – asking questions and starting conversations. Social media automation can help hugely with this. It isn’t about bulking up content, automating questions and then not looking at your social media platforms for the rest of the year. It’s about being organized, having a constant flow of content and making the content you have go further. While the content you share should be engaging, you may worry about scheduling the same content multiple times. Will it bore your audience? Will it make them unfollow you? No, resharing content, particularly if it’s evergreen, is a great move. Over the years, organic Facebook reach has declined quite a bit. In 2012, Facebook revealed that on average a newsfeed post is only seen by 12% of followers. But since then research by EdgeRank Check (which has now been acquired by Social Bakers) showed that by March 2014, this had declined to 6.5%. So it’s unlikely any of your followers will even notice if you schedule something more than once, because the fact is that most people won’t see a post the first time you share it. By sharing a piece of content again, you are increasing the chances that a user who missed it the first time will see it. Resharing is better than a bare newsfeed or not being seen by your followers at all. Scheduling and sharing both evergreen content and new content in a strategic way will help build your social media presence without it taking over your life. But it’s only helpful if what you’re posting engages your followers and other social media users. So here are some tips for scheduling the most engaging social media posts possible. How to put a social media scheduling plan in place Know what you want you to gain by using social media Before you start posting, it’s a good idea to have a social media strategy in place so you know exactly what it is that you want to gain from your social media activities. Do you want to have a large number of followers, so at a glance people will see your business as popular and trusted? Or do you want to build a truly engaging social media presence, with a focus on likes, comments, shares and conversations? If you’re all about conversions, share content related to your products and services and think best about how to do this in a way that won’t overwhelm followers. The 80/20 rule seems to be becoming the standard for content marketing. This means only 20% of your content should directly promote your brand, products or services, while the other 80% is content that informs, intrigues and grabs your customer’s attention but isn’t directly related to your products. Use a social media style guide to stay on brand Once you know what it is that you want to get out of your social media platforms, you can put together a social media style guide to use as a reference point. It might seem a bit excessive to have a style guide specifically for social media, but the idea behind it is to keep your posts consistent and to make sure your social presence is in keeping with your brand voice. This is particularly important if more than one person is writing content for your social media platforms. A social media style guide is a practical marketing tool to make sure that everything you say and do on social media makes sense for your brand. In your guidelines, include things like personas, tone, language, the types of images and curated content you should share, your brand values, adjectives to describe your personality, as well as more practical information on where you should post and how often. You can even go as far as offering platform specific guidelines, which URL shortener to use and how to deal with trolls. We like this social media style guide from New York University, because it includes words not to use on its social media, as well as specific directions on punctuation. [perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“In VERY RARE instances (major celebrity appearances, top awards, international recognition, etc.) multiple exclamation points may be used (but think judiciously about whether the situation warrants more than one).”[/perfectpullquote] It may seem over the top, but correct punctuation is particularly important for a university’s brand. You can also check out this social media style guide from MailChimp, which is part of the company’s overall content style guide. It’s very clear, succinct and would make it easy for anyone posting to their social channels to be on brand. Your style guide doesn’t have to be long, but if it includes examples and is comprehensive, it will make everything easier. Take a glance at it before sitting down to schedule some posts – or keep it beside you for any questions that may pop up while you’re posting. If you sit down to organise some scheduling, you’ll quickly get into the flow of things. If you build a consistent voice, your followers will be more likely to engage with your content. It’s likely the reason they followed you in the first place. Create a holiday calendar to inspire quirky posts A holiday calendar might appear at odds with the whole idea of automating social media content in advance. While the bulk of your content should be evergreen so it can be re-posted numerous times, if you fail to look at the calendar, you may be missing out on opportunities. Use a content calendar to keep an eye out for what people will be talking about. If you forget to wish your customers a happy Christmas and continue to post non-stop about the benefits of e-commerce, they might start to notice a lack of human touch. Having a holiday calendar with the year’s main holidays and events, as well as some