In our last blog we discussed how to get started on utilizing social media for your small business or startup, from having your plan to selecting the right platforms to deciding what you might talk about. Today we’re here to discuss a few more specifics of social media. While creating your content calendar or drafting your posts may seem like child’s play, we’re here to take the gray area out of it.

Creating a Content Calendar

When making your content calendar, expect to set aside one to two hours per week for it. During this time you’ll draft all of your posts. While drafting your posts, take note of the links for other interesting articles so you have easily accessible content for the next time you sit down to draft your posts. Once you have your drafts written, you can choose to save them for posting in real time or you can schedule them out on social media.

Facebook allows for simple (and free) scheduling for your page. You can choose the day and specific time you want your post to go out, press schedule, then voilà, all done! You can sit back and relax and utilize your time for being social on social media rather than remembering that it’s time to post.

Twitter also allows for third-party methods of scheduling tweets. The two most popular (and free) platforms for scheduling tweets are Hootsuite and Tweetdeck.

Take it one week at a time when starting out with your content calendar. It can become easy to get overwhelmed and lose the balance of finding the time for social media during your already busy work week. If you’re struggling to come up with content, here are a few ideas you can use to get going.

• Utilize any weekly events for your organization.
• Holidays, or “national day of..” type of events.
• Chat with users about new services, products, or applications for business.
• As you become more established with social media, you can begin to repurpose older posts. Social media happens fast, so you can take older posts and update them so they’re still relevant. This is also a great method for repurposing links to your website and blog articles.

How Often Should You Post on Social Media?

When it comes to posting, it’s important to understand the optimum number of posts for the social media platforms you’re using. Each platform has their ideal number of postings a day. These numbers represent what your followers want to see, what is likely to keep them from unfollowing you, and what will optimize their engagement.

How often should you be posting?

• Twitter: 3 times per day, or more
• Facebook: 2 times per day, at most
• LinkedIn: 1 time per day
• Pinterest: 5 times per day, or more
• Instagram: 1.5 times per day, or more
• Blog: 2 times per week if possible

Keep in these tips in mind so you don’t feel overwhelmed:

• You will want to start in one or two channels, not all of them.
• Master those and build your audience (6 months at least); then look at another channel.
• You’re creating similar posts and talking about similar topics, just tweaking for the audiences in each channel.
• If your audience is not in one of the social networks above, then you don’t need to be there either.
• Talk about the things most important to your prospects, buyers, and customers, and share what they would find useful.
• Be consistent! That is why we strongly recommend having a plan and scheduling posts ahead of time.

As you get started or enhance your social media presence, please let us know what resources and information you need to keep GROWing.

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