Do you have a social media calendar/planning spreadsheet? Do you schedule your posts?
Plenty of folks don’t realize how critical this can be in promoting yourself and your work across multiple platforms—without also burning yourself out.
Scheduling posts during the work week allows me to remain focused where I should be: on my clients. I leave my weekends open because I’m (usually) not working then and can be more free. Scheduling also means that when I’m on, I’m responding to others instead of figuring out what to say.
If I think a post has the potential for high engagement, I save it for a day that I’ll be available to properly participate in the conversation. Social Media isn’t about dropping a question or info and disappearing—though we see a lot of it—it’s about proper connection.
I plan what I will hope will bring HIGH engagement but I also plan LOW engagement posts. This ensures I’m not wrapped up on social media instead of providing edits AND it keeps my social meter/spoons/battery from getting wiped out.
If I read an interesting article or find something else that may be beneficial, I may bump a less important post to a later date to give time for whatever is of higher value to you all. But I still have a skeleton of a plan for at least a few weeks out.
Authors (and editors) are business entities—you need to be considering how you are engaging and, at times like then when we’re seeing an inevitable social media shift, how you’re diversifying your content across platforms.
Here’s a peek at my calendar from a few weeks ago:
