In How to Create a Social Media Schedule – Part 1,we looked at daily social media content tasks. This time, let’s turn to weekly, monthly and annual social media posting tasks.
Weekly
Google loves freshly updated content on your website, so from that perspective, the more often you blog, the better.
Of course, you need to balance potential Google juice against your available time, as well as how often your network wants to hear from you. Ideally, you’ll publish a new blog post at least weekly. If you’re stuck for blog post ideas, here are few places you can mine:
- Google your area of expertise and look for inspiration in other websites. Of course, make the content yours by applying your own ideas, interpretations and style.
- Keep a notebook where you can jot down blog content inspiration whenever it strikes. Once you start opening yourself to ideas, they will come. Probably more than you can use.
- Brainstorm blog post ideas, perhaps with a colleague or friend. Write down as many ideas as you can and you’ll have a good supply to work off for your weekly posts. You only need about 50 ideas for a whole year’s editorial calendar.
My goal in 2012 is to publish new posts on my blogs, 52WeightLossMissions.com (this one’s new) and GetOrganizedWizard.com, each week. But I must confess that when I’m working on a new product, my posting frequency always goes down, down, down. :( I have a potential solution – see ‘Annually’ for my tip!
Monthly
It’s a good idea to do a monthly review of your social media efforts.
There’s no point endlessly repeating something that doesn’t work. And by weeding out ineffective tasks, you make room to experiment with new ones that might bring great results. For your blog, review the stats on your Google Analytics. Consider how you can improve your blogging, for example:
- Which posts were most popular?
- Which ones failed to resonate with your readers?
- What can you try this month to capitalise on what your analytics show?
For your Facebook page, click on Insights to see how your fans responded to your posts over the past month. Again, consider what you can do differently over the coming month. If you use bitly for your Twitter links, then you can track and analyse how people have clicked and shared your stuff. Then you can then decide whether, and how, you want to vary your tweets next month.
Annually
Lastly, here’s a strategy for people who like to plan.
Create an editorial calendar for the whole year – yep, all 52 weeks of it! Use a planner diary and map out your blog posts to fit in with seasons, holidays, industry events, or anything important to your readers. You can simply outline your posts, or draft them, or write them in full. How much you plan and write depends on your motivation, clarity and energy. This strategy is not for everyone, but it can work well for people who write fast and well once they get ‘on a roll’. But it’s not as flexible as writing on a monthly basis. So there you have it: your very own social media schedule. Now go post something!
