Tips for Creating a Social Media Calendar
Today we’re going to be talking about tips for creating a social media calendar. As you know, there are always new social media types coming up and disappearing. We know that Instagram is the running horse. It’s shooting up, down and centres and it’s absolutely overtaking some of the others and annihilating them. We also know that Google Plus has disappeared and is no longer a thing. So you need to make sure that you have a multi-tier approach whenever you are going to be marketing through any social media and marketing in general. You don’t want to rely upon only one technology because when it disappears, you’ll burn and you will disappear as well. So there are these tools that come out for managing social media calendars.
We Love Social Bee
One of the fantastic ones that I’ve been looking at and playing around with recently is Social Bee. It is absolutely incredible. What it can do is far superior to any of the other different social media calendars out there.
I’ve used Buffer, Sendible and Hootsuite and by far, SocialBee is the tip-top best that there is. Best bang for the buck. Nevertheless, I’m digressing.
If you want a free trial, send me a message and we’ll get it sorted for you. I’ll give you a trial for a month or two so you can play around. However long you want, we’ll give it a go. See what you think. That’s how passionate I am about the product. Nevertheless, I’m not associated with them. I just really love the product.
Think About the Future
Make sure that your social media calendar is set up in such a way that you’re able to send the posts out at an appropriate time that help your end-users see them when you want to see them. There’s this compounding effect whenever you put a post through to any of the social sites. Eight years ago or so, you can send out these posts and everyone on your list, everyone that has liked your page, everyone, all of your friends would see this post and be like, ‘Okay, that’s pretty cool. Awesome, awesome.’
Facebook Today
Then Facebook decided to make some money out of this. So we’re going to give you a little taste tester of your audience, so if you’ve got 1,000 people that have liked your business page on Facebook, they’re only going to show your page to 100 people. Those 100 people, when they look at this link, if their engagement levels are high, so they’re sharing it a lot, they’re commenting a lot, they’re liking it a lot, you then have a carry on effect and Facebook will show your post to a larger subset of your audience. So instead of 100, they’ll then show it to 200 more people. So then 300 people and only a third of your audience have seen it.
As time has gone on and your News Feed has become more and more valuable to Facebook, what they’ve done is they’ve cut that 100. So originally 1,000 were seeing it and they cut it to 100, and now they’ve cut it down to like 10 to 15 people. So as a percentage, next to nothing. One and a half per cent of your visitors are seeing this traffic. When they see it, if they have high engagement, Facebook then starts pumping it through.
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You Need Engaging Posts
The problem is unless you’re paying to boost all your posts, which can cost a heap of money over time, you need to make sure that when you have an engaging post, it’s seen at a time that puts it close to the top of the News Feed so at least the people that it is being shown to are engaging with it for you to gain more organic reach.
Example
A great example would be a photographer from the last example, from the last podcast. You might have a thought and go, “Okay, we have this beautiful deal that we’re putting through. A really funny, engaging post that releases dopamine, makes people chuckle, and we want to have this post released on Instagram, on Facebook, and on LinkedIn.”
Choose Your Site Wisely
So what you do is you think, “All right, I don’t want to release on all these things at the same time because as we’re already discussing, if you have it going through to Facebook, although it’s a fantastic medium, it’s going to be when people are more in a relaxed downtime mode, or they’re at lunch or they’ve just finished, or they’re picking up the kids from school or something like that.” So when you’re advertising this post, and you can have the same deal, let’s call it six portrait photos for 60 bucks or something like that. Okay, you have this great, awesome deal. When you sell the six portrait photos for 60 bucks and you’d do it on Facebook, you’d be wanting to make sure that the audience and the way that you’re wording all the information is more around six family photos for 60 bucks. Cherish the memory of your kids at the age that they are, and have this last forever or whatever. Then when you’re putting it through on Instagram, six portrait photos to boost your business profile. Make sure you get that job and you’re paid what you’re worth, and then you have that post go through. Then Instagram you’d have a more generic one that would apply to both audiences where possible.
When to Post
Now the release time of this, when people are looking to get another job, can you guess which day they do that on? It’s the days they have their shits after they’ve been away on holidays, days after public holidays. These are huge days for people to want to change jobs because they’re coming back in, they’ve got to fight this fire where normally it’s a Monday of two days of problems. Now instead they’re fighting this fire when there are three or four days, or if it’s been over Christmas, sometimes two weeks to a month. That’s right, and if you’re overseas listeners, we get a lot of time off over Christmas. How good is Australia? Yeah, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oe, Oe Oe. Nevertheless, when you come back, people want to change jobs. They might’ve had a new year’s resolution to earn more money or walk their way up the ladder or whatever it is. Then they get taken down a peg when they realize that they don’t really have the capacity to do that. Nevertheless, advertising at appropriate times in some of these different channels is a great idea, and using a social media calendar automation tools such as SocialBee will allow you to do that with ease.
Scheduling Is Key
You’ll be able to set it up and schedule certain posts to go through at certain times when you know they’re going to be looking at it. You know on that Tuesday after a Monday public holiday in Australia or anywhere else, at around 12:30 maybe 12:00, if you put up a post about enhancing your LinkedIn profile on LinkedIn, people are likely to see it because people are looking around thinking, “I’m not interested in this job anymore. Let’s make sure my resume is up to date.” Then they jump straight across to LinkedIn, make sure that LinkedIn is up to date, and then they see this post in their News Feed and they think, “Shit, I need to make sure my photos are up to date.” So that is where you can really capture a lot of audiences.
Now imagine the flip side. Yeah, advertising is the same wonderfully crafted piece of the image that you chuck up there, and you put it up there on a Thursday at 4:00, just after they’ve had lunch before they’re coming home. They don’t want to be looking at LinkedIn on their way home. They’re going to be in traffic for the next couple of hours, they’re going to get home. They’re going to crack open a beer. They’re going to be talking to their Mrs or their husband or whatever it is, and they’re going to be in disinterest. That post is going to be seen to have a lack of hits, lack of results that are coming through. When that happens, your post is not going to be promoted organically. So you want to make sure you continue to have that organic reach because if people are clicking on that post and they are engaging with it, you’re going to reach more people with less effort and less money. Ultimately, all it came down to was a very simple social media calendar automation tool like SocialBee.
The Final Word
I hope you’ve enjoyed this and if you have we’re doing some pretty good deals at the moment. If you’re local to around South East Queensland, I’ll personally come out and drop off a six-pack of beer. We can meet in person, and talk about your business. Stay good.
