How do you schedule social media content?

As long as you divide your content into buckets, I recommend uploading and scheduling your content over a long period of time. Schedule out: ★ Evergreen content, up to 6 months. ★ Seasonal content, up to 4-6 weeks. ★ Local and community content, up to 2 weeks. ★ Educational content, up to 4 weeks. ★ Inspirational content, up to 6 months. ★ Promotional content, as long as the sale runs. ★ Conversational content, up to 1 week. ★ Entertaining content, up to 3 months. ★ Curated content (other people's content), up to 6 months if it falls in the 'evergreen' bucket. Caveat - Be sure to schedule content at a time you are present on social media so that you can engage in real-time, especially when posting conversations and entertainment!

Pro tip: Never prepare more than 2 weeks worth of content in advance. You many hear gurus and experts preaching preparing month worth of content at once. But, when you come back to your content few days down the line, you may no longer resonate with some of the ideas and even find it cringe or loose actual context. So, instead, you can keep that idea in your notes or ideas folder and refer to it later.

I prewrite my blog work a week in advance. My Monday and Wednesday blog posts are general LinkedIn observations and newsy items that I want others to know. My Tuesday post is "Back to Basics" to remind readers to review their visibility and be better perceived, my Thursday post is titled "Thoughtful Thursday" in which I post my own thoughts to guide others to a higher ground, and on Friday it's "Best Question of the Week" that I have accumulated since many have the same questions that need answers. Finally, I have set all posts on WordPress to publish at 800 am New York time to greet most of my audience as they get to the office. Some report to me that they have their first cup of coffee at their desk while reading my blog. Flattered!

Tools like Canva or Photoshop Express are a must for your work. They make it easy to develop templates and quickly create visually appealing posts.

There are several scheduling tools out there but as of late, all socials have a way to schedule content within the platform itself. This is great if you’re a small business operating with a limited budget. However there is something to be said for the “one-stop” schedule tools. They allow for you to batch schedule, duplicate posts instantly and make platform-specific changes when needed AND have robust reporting that gives you a full picture of how your content is performing.

There are several scheduling tools available, such as Hootsuite or Buffer. For LinkedIn, there is AuthoredUp. All of these tools are good, but you should always keep an eye on the preview of your posts. It's easy to make mistakes and your posts won't come out in the quality you want (e.g. no image in the link preview).

In my experience, GainApp is a robust scheduler with a simple client approval process. Additionally, Buffer is an ideal scheduling tool for a small business owner.