Social media is a powerful tool for community outreach, but it can also be overwhelming and time-consuming. How do you plan and schedule your posts in advance, so you can reach your audience effectively and efficiently? In this article, we'll share some tips and best practices for managing your social media accounts for community outreach.
Before you start creating and scheduling your posts, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. What are the main objectives of your community outreach? Who are the people you want to engage with and what are their interests, needs, and preferences? How do you measure your impact and success? Having a clear vision and strategy will help you craft relevant and compelling content for your social media platforms.
Depending on your goals and audience, you may want to use different social media platforms to reach them. For example, Facebook is great for building relationships and sharing stories, while Twitter is ideal for sharing news and updates. Instagram and Pinterest are perfect for showcasing visuals and inspiring action, while YouTube and TikTok are popular for creating and sharing videos. You don't have to use all of them, but you should focus on the ones that suit your purpose and audience best. You should also use tools that help you plan and schedule your posts in advance, such as Buffer, Hootsuite, or Later. These tools allow you to create a content calendar, manage multiple accounts, and track your performance.
If you are using multiple platforms and/or cross-posting from one social media management tool, think carefully about format, length, hashtags. Some social media platforms are more responsive to certain content or attract certain types of followings. Tags may not work the same way in all platforms. You should track metrics to see ic your approach is working then adjust accordingly.
Once you have your platforms and tools ready, you can start creating and curating your content. You should aim to create a mix of original and curated content that aligns with your goals and audience. Original content is the content that you create yourself, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, or podcasts. Curated content is the content that you share from other sources, such as articles, reports, quotes, or testimonials. You should always add your own perspective and value to the curated content, and give credit to the original source. You should also use hashtags, keywords, and tags to optimize your content for search and discovery.
One quick and easy way to use curated content is to highlight an illustrative quote or to summarize what is in it. Then you are adding value by making the longer form content more accessible to a broader audience while saving time for your followers. You also need to create less original content. It is a win-win-win.
The next step is to schedule and publish your posts according to your content calendar. You should consider the best times and frequencies to post on each platform, based on your audience's behavior and preferences. You can use tools like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule your posts in advance, and set reminders or notifications to publish them. You should also check your posts for spelling, grammar, and formatting errors before publishing them. You can use tools like Grammarly or Hemingway to proofread and edit your posts.
It can be helpful to cover a certain theme by week or month and to plan that ahead. It is more time efficient to write several posts at once. Then, using the tools already described you can schedule posting times for the future. Using this kind of a tool also allows crossposting to multiple social media platforms while maintaining a record of what you posted. Personally, I do that for certain “brands” for which I post but for my own account I keep it more impromptu and organic. I mostly repost from content appearing on my own feed and add additional commentary.
The last step is to engage and interact with your audience on social media. You should monitor your posts and respond to comments, questions, and feedback from your followers. You should also join relevant conversations and groups, and share your insights and opinions. You should also acknowledge and appreciate your supporters, partners, and collaborators, and showcase your impact and achievements. You should also use analytics and metrics to measure your performance and results, and adjust your strategy and content accordingly.
While planning, scheduling, and automating are important, you need to maintain the human connection and authenticity. Monitoring a post for comments is where organic conversations can happens if you “like” and reply in a timely manner. Besides the human aspect of that kind of interaction, it also drives up engagement metrics or resurfaces the post in a feed. Then your post can become a meeting place of multiple people adding their own perspectives.