what are the benefits of scheduling social media?

We’re still working through our one idea-three posts series on social media scheduling. Last week we looked at 3 tools you can use for scheduling your social media updates. But, perhaps you are wondering, “Why bother with scheduling at all?”

As a blogger, I’ve had seasons where I was proficient at scheduling and seasons when I was not. The reality is, social media is a key component in sharing your message and building your brand. But, social media can also be incredibly time consuming and give you the feeling you can never do enough. Social media is probably one of the greatest balancing acts we do as bloggers.  What to share, when to share, and how much to share are huge questions and often we end up doing nothing {or very little} because we are overwhelmed by the enormity of the process.

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Over the past few years as I’ve coached many bloggers in developing social media strategy, I’ve found that feeling overwhelmed is a huge barrier to developing an effective and efficient social media plan. But here’s the truth: Social media doesn’t have to take all your time and energy.  You can build a plan that is both doable for you and beneficial for your audience. The key is scheduling updates!

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When I’m talking with a blogger, I always start with helping them identify the benefits of scheduling updates. I start there because it helps to understand why it’s good to learn that new tool and add this extra task into the routine. Otherwise, it just feels like one more thing we have to do.

What are the benefits of scheduling social media?

Saves Time

Setting aside time to schedule multiple social media updates is a great way to be more efficient. When we schedule updates in batches, we free up the minutes we’d be using otherwise to stop and start other tasks in order to share. Yes, getting into the habit of scheduling social media can take some time. But in the end, it is a huge way to save time.

Expands Message and Brand

Scheduling social media updates is a great way to expand your message and brand.  Recently, I wrote a blog post titled “5 Simple Changes I’m Making for My Health.” While I did share the post I wrote, I also shared related posts that emphasized small but effective ways to live healthier. This is especially useful on Facebook {which is where the majority of my audience is most active}. I crafted multiple updates including sharing my post, links to other related posts, and asking questions. When we take time to schedule social media, we can be more intentional about sharing information useful to our audience which will in turn help expend our messages and build our brands. 

Extends Life of Posts

Here’s a biggie — and something far too many bloggers fail to do — schedule social media for your posts beyond the day they publish. Take time to schedule social media reminders about each post later on the calendar.  For example, I schedule an update about most posts I write for one week later, one month later, three months later, six months later, and one year later.  For evergreen content, you can schedule updates more frequently.

I hope you can see how scheduling social media can benefit you in multiple ways. In addition, your readers have the opportunity to interact with your posts more than once which is very important considering how fast social media can move and how much information is presented online every single day.

Which of these three benefits to scheduling social media most appeals to you?