Technology Tip
Dave Pelland has extensive experience covering the business use of technology, networking and communications tools by companies of all sizes. Dave's editorial and corporate experience includes more than 10 years editing an electronic technology and communications industry newsletter for a global professional services firm.

Social Media Scheduling Tools Boost Efficiency

Social Media Scheduling Tools Boost Efficiency

If you’re overwhelmed by the variety of social media platforms or unsure how to balance your time, social media scheduling tools can help you promote your business and increase engagement with prospects and customers more efficiently.

While different tools include varying features, they share a common purpose of allowing people to publish content to, and manage, their accounts on one or more social networks on a dashboard screen.

For instance, you can publish the same content and images, or share links, to sites including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and other platforms by entering the information on one screen.

Most tools give you the option of posting an update in real time, or scheduling posts to go live in the future. This can be helpful, for instance, if you want to reach an early-morning audience, or target customers in a different time zone, without having to be online to post an update.

Among the benefits these tools can provide:

  • Saving you the time of posting content over and over to different sites. One update can be posted automatically to multiple networks.
  • Increasing engagement with different sites and audiences.
  • Preparing social posts when it’s convenient for your schedule.
  • Being able to identify and recycle your most popular content.

Scheduling tools also give you the ability to develop several posts in one sitting, and to schedule their distribution over a period of time. This can help free up more time to research or develop content ideas for future posts.

Increasing Engagement

Scheduling posts also opens time for reacting to likes and comments on your existing content. This can mean welcoming a new follower or thanking someone for a comment. However you interact with followers, doing so promotes engagement and as people see your willingness to interact, they are more likely to like or comment on new content as it’s posted.

You can also plan a series of posts as part of a targeted marketing campaign. Say, for instance, you’re planning a promotional offer tied to an upcoming holiday. You can start the campaign with posts that preview the promotion 10 to 14 days ahead of time, which could help build anticipation and excitement as the promotion’s launch day grows near.

Scheduling tools can also promote collaboration, such as by allowing a team member to develop content that’s reviewed and approved by someone else before it’s scheduled for distribution.

If you’re scheduling posts in advance, try to avoid content that can seem stale or awkward when it’s posted. If, for instance, you have a tweet mentioning a business leader who passes away before your post goes live, delete it from your scheduling tool to avoid seeming insensitive.

Unlocking Analytics

Some social media scheduling tools also include powerful analytics features that enable you to measure and monitor the performance of your published content. The metrics can vary among scheduling tools, with more sophisticated tools coming as part of expensive subscriptions, but even basic metrics such as likes, shares, comments and growth in your follower counts on different platforms can give you insights into the types of content that resonates most effectively with the people you’re trying to engage with.

And understanding your most popular content can help you develop similar posts or reschedule your top-performing posts, so they reach a new audience at a different time.

Popular social media scheduling tools include Buffer, TweetDeck, Hootsuite, SproutSocial, and others.


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