One of the cardinal rules of establishing an effective social media presence is posting new content to your social media channels on a regular and consistent basis. With so much activity on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, it's easy to get lost in people's news feeds.
At the same time, posting too many messages at once is considered "spammy" and can actually backfire and alienate your audience.
How often and when you post will vary by your audience and goals, but as a general rule, I recommend posting to your social media accounts a minimum of 3 times per week, but preferably at least once every weekday.
Anyone who manages social media accounts knows that this is easier said than done. Writing social media posts on a regular basis takes time and discipline, and getting those messages in front of people when they are online and paying attention is very difficult for a small business with limited time and resources.
 A great solution to help with posting consistency is to use scheduling software, such as Hootsuite, to manage your posts. Hootsuite is an online service that allows you to connect to all of your social media accounts in one place to monitor their activity from one interface. It also includes the ability to schedule posts to be sent out to one or multiple networks at specified times, up to 1 year in advance.
Here are 4 reasons to consider using a service like Hootsuite.
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Efficiency. It doesn't seem like it would be all that difficult, but try adding one post just to your Facebook page every day for the next month. Using scheduling software, you can sit down for an hour, write and schedule a series of daily posts for the next week. You'll find that this makes it much easier to post consistently on your networks.
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Timeliness. When you post is almost as important as how often you post. Common sense says that you should post when your audience is online so that they are more likely to see you in their active news feeds. It is much easier to do this using scheduling software than to try and maintain a schedule manually.
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Coordination of Multiple Networks. Maintaining a presence on multiple networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, just amplifies the difficulty of posting consistently. Using schedule software, you can easily post the same message to multiple networks, or even create custom messages for each network.
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Strategy. Scheduling also gives you the ability to create campaigns of messages in advance. For example, if you are hosting an event, you can plan a series of messages about that event to keep it on people's radar. I regularly receive feedback from clients and their audiences that scheduled posts about upcoming events are helpful reminders.
Do you use scheduling software with your social media accounts? If so, which one do you use? How has it helped you increase your consistency and effectiveness in the social media.
At Alternative Marketing Connections, we configure Hootsuite as part of our social media setup package for small businesses, and then teach our clients how to use the service to manage their posts. Hootsuite also allows us to manage and schedule social media messages on behalf of our clients who subscribe to our social media management packages. For more information on these services, visit our website at http://altmktg.com/social-media-marketing, or contact us at hello@altmktg.com or (360) 350-3350.
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