How Do I Schedule My Social Media Marketing During Holidays?
The sun is out, the days are getting longer, the flowers are beginning to bloom and the black clouds of winter are starting to lift. It can only mean thing; Spring is here at last!
And this year, thanks to an early calendar, that means Easter is almost upon us too. Yes, in just a couple of weeks, we’ll be treated to a lovely long weekend bookended by two glorious bank holidays. What more could we need as we emerge from the gloom of the winter months?
But it’s not just Easter that is about to give us all a well-deserved long weekend of rest as, hot on the heels of the Easter break, we also have two bank holidays next month to boot; the early May Day Bank Holiday on Monday 6th May, followed by the Spring Bank Holiday on Monday 27th May.
But what have these delicious long weekends off got to do with my business’ social media management, we hear you ask?! Surely, I can just ignore my social media for a few days whilst I’m off?
Well, of course you can but, thanks to modern technology, there really is no need. Plus, as it’s more beneficial for you not to, you really have no excuse either. So, if you’re wondering how you can ensure your social media marketing continues even when you’re not working, then read on.
Why Is It Important To Continue With My Social Media Marketing?
As we’ve already discussed in previous blog posts, Social Media Marketing is key to getting your business noticed online these days. No matter what type of business you’re in, your audience will be spending time on social media and, if they encounter you and your business there, then they are much more likely to get to know, like and trust you and, in turn, buy from you.
Hence, it’s important that you publish content across your social media platforms – and lots of content at that. However, one of the main factors in making sure your social media marketing will be a success is consistency. All the social media algorithms value consistency and so, once you start to publish content – at whatever rate you chose that to be – then you must continue to publish content at the same rate.
That means that, even on weekends and holidays, you still need to be putting content out there for your audience to engage with. In fact, there’s even an argument that weekends and holidays are more – not less – important than other, normal working week days.
Just think about how you use social media yourself, on a personal level. During the week, you’re busy; doing your job, doing the school run, doing the weekly shop, picking the kids up and running them around to their appointments etc. etc.. At these peak times, social media can end up being something that you only get a chance to glance at, periodically.
On the other hand, when it comes to the weekends and to those glorious days off work, you have much more time on your hands (or you should, if you’re doing them correctly!) and hence you might have longer to browse on Facebook or LinkedIn. Your audience is no different. If you want to catch their attention and get them to engage with you, then publishing your social media content when they’re most likely to see it just makes common sense.
How Can I Ensure My Social Media Posts Are Published When I’m Not In Work?
But even if you know that you need to be putting out content on weekends and on bank holidays, how do you make sure that happens? Even the most dedicated business owners amongst us don’t want to be breaking our precious days off to log on to Facebook just to post something work related! As we all know, family time is too valuable for that.
So, instead, it’s vital that you put contingency plans in place and plan ahead, to ensure your social media marketing carries on, whether you’re in the office or not.
If you’re tackling your social media marketing alone, then the easiest way of doing this is by scheduling posts. There are two ways of doing this; the first is to use the scheduling function provided by the social media platforms themselves. Unfortunately, however, only Facebook enables scheduling by default on all posts; if you want to schedule posts in Twitter then you need to use a tool such a Tweetdeck.
However, there are down sides to trying to schedule your posts directly into the individual platforms; putting aside the fact that some social media channels don’t provide the ability to schedule posts at all (which in itself is bad enough!), even those that do often don’t permit you to schedule more than one or two posts in advance. That’s just no good if you’re going to be out of the office for more than a single day.
Also, the faff of having to log in to each profile individually and write specific posts, then schedule them all for similar times, then repeat the whole process again for each additional platform is just too much. Doing social media management in such a laborious way is simply too time-consuming and will set you up to fail from the beginning.
Instead, the best and most efficient way of ensuring your social media posts are scheduled correctly, easily and with the least amount of work is to use a secondary platform, such as Hootsuite or Buffer. Both of these are great tools to help you schedule posts in advance, plus they’re free to get you started.
Thanks to these tools, you can compose one single message and schedule it to go out on up to three different social media platforms (for the free version), plus you can even schedule enough posts for an entire week in advance. If you sign up to the paid versions, then you can add as many different platforms as you like and schedule posts as far into the future as you need.
That way, even if you’re going on holiday for a month (you lucky thing!) you can still ensure your social media marketing will continue regardless, at the same rate. Perfect!
Should I Employ Someone To Do My Social Media Management For Me?
Of course, if carrying out all of this social media marketing by yourself sounds a little bit daunting, then there are easier options. If you employ someone to do your social media management on behalf of your business, then all of your problems could be solved at once!
For one thing, a dedicated Social Media Marketer would get to know you and your business, so they would also be able to ensure you post the right content for your business and your audience at all times.
What’s more, a personal social media expert would be able to make sure your content goes out across all your social media channels at all times, consistently. Whether you want to engage someone to post on your behalf just whilst you’re away on a trip – or a long weekend – or whether you want someone who can help you make the most of this marketing channel all year round, then a Social Media Marketing Agency is the answer your business is looking for.
Shine On Digital have been social media experts in our field since social media first came on the scene, so we really do know what we’re talking about. Our team of marketing professionals can help you to maximise your impact online and ensure your business puts out a consistent brand message, regardless of the time of day, night or weekend.
If you’d like to find out more, then simply get in touch with one of our friendly team today; we’re absolutely ready to help. You can contact us by emailing info@shineondigital.co.uk or by phoning 01706 482017.