How To Schedule Social Media Posts Across Multiple Platforms
Social media marketing can be one of the most frustrating and confounding things for many small businesses and nonprofits to get right. We know that establishing a digital presence is crucial to engaging customers, donors and anyone else you NEED to interact with your brand in the 21st century. But there are so many social media platforms and mountains of tasks on those platforms to be effective.
Success for so many businesses and organizations requires success across multiple social media platforms. We want to help you demystify that process.
Digital Marketing Success: Planning Social Media Across Many Platforms
Sometimes it feels like someone handed you a plate of spaghetti and asked you to line up the noodles end to end. Your digital marketing strategy may require posting one way on Instagram earlier in the day, LinkedIn a bit later, and then perhaps even TikTok for good measure.
Each platform carries its own weight and distinct ways of doing things.
How can anyone keep up with them all, especially if you’re like the small businesses and nonprofit organizations we typically serve? Can a small team – or a team of one – successfully deploy the right volume of social media at the right places, in the right ways, at the right times?
This is where having a good plan comes in. Let’s see if we can help you come up with a strategy for posting as one element of a strong storytelling plan to succeed in the 21st century.
Understand Your Audience & Your Goals
Do you understand your ideal audience? It’s so important that you recognize who your audience is and what messaging they need to hear from you.
Your social media goals must be centered around the people you serve. You can say, “I want to post once a day across all my platforms,” but remember that communication needs a transmitter AND a receiver! For example: “I want to post content that informs blue collar workers about their retirement options.” or “I want to post content that helps informed blue collar workers invest in their retirement through my services.”
Pay attention to the platforms that your audience frequents. If your ideal audience is on YouTube, the answer is clear: you should be posting more videos to YouTube. If they’re on Twitter (X), you should be posting content that engages them there. Accomplish your goals by getting the right content in front of the right audience at the right place and the right time.
Content Planning & Creation
The biggest mistake most people make with social media content is posting in the moment. I do think you need those in-the-moment posts, when something noteworthy happens that you want to tell people about – an award, a milestone, a fun moment.
There’s certainly something to be said for celebrating things or putting out a funny post every so often to show “the human side” of your organization. But your digital content creation must be intentional. To be a thought leader, your content must be informative and helpful. It must help your target audience solve their problems. To create content that consistently engages, you need to do some strategic planning.
Start by developing a calendar. Simply enough, I like to use Google Sheets to make a spreadsheet. I’ll often put a column of dates, I’ll highlight important dates and events, and then start filling in a variety of content – proprietary content, podcast episodes, blog promotions, inspiring quotes, video and graphics, third-party wisdom, and more!
Establish Posting Frequency & Content Types
My personal preference: you should post on social media at LEAST once every weekday. There are different trains of thought that dictate posting less or more. In general, the more you post, the more touch points you have to get your content in front of your ideal audience.
To say “you should post everyday” often makes people uncomfortable. “We can’t keep up with that!” is the common response. I’ve found it’s easier to sit down in one afternoon and come up with 25 or so things to post than to come up with something on the fly every day.
Ideally, the content would be a little different for each platform. Some platforms have smaller character counts. Some platforms prefer video, some audio, while others still prefer text. Make each platform unique. That’s what they’re there for.
Rather than posting the same thing at the same time across platforms, vary the posting schedule and content types. (Remember the whole “knowing your audience” part just a bit ago?) Don’t just post the same things across all your social media platforms and call it good. You’ll find that to be wasted effort, as certain platforms will almost certainly perform terribly.
The Gold Standard of Short-Form Video
The digital consumer has evolved with time. In the grand scheme, the digital universe hasn’t been around that long, and people’s attention spans and content preferences have collectively moved from the written word to ever-shrinking lengths of video.
Enter the gold standard of short-form video. And the algorithms that deliver content to individual users based on those preferences have taken notice. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok all have great discovery algorithms for short form video. I highly recommend creating videos – even if they are simple cell phone videos – and posting in these venues.
Let the algorithm help you help others. Feed it the right content!
Choose the Right Social Media Management Tools
Of course, all this begs the question: “How can we efficiently schedule so much content across all these platforms?” For sure, it would take a long time to bounce back and forth between apps.
Rest assured, there are many tools available to post in various social networks from one centralized app. Later, Hootsuite, Buffer, Constant Contact, HubSpot, Sprout Social, TweetDeck to name a few. We’ve used them all for various clients. I hesitate to recommend one over another. It often depends on your organization’s distinct goals and budget.
I can say that I often find myself in a space where the client’s social scheduling tool doesn’t do ALL of their platforms. Whether it’s a problem using 2FA to connect to all of them, or an issue of affordability for them to import all of their platforms. I often end up scheduling posts through native schedulers like the Meta Business Suite or the built in scheduler on each platform.
Each social media mass-scheduling app has pros and cons. It’s best to research them before deciding. If you’re going to pay for a platform, Later is a great value. The cost is more affordable, and you can set up multiple platforms and groups. You can also bulk upload images, and save hashtag sets. Hootsuite is pricey, but the premium versions have the ability to do mass scheduling via CSV file, which is crucial if you’re dealing with a LOT of content.
Monitor, Engage & Respond
Regularly take a look at your analytics. See what’s working and what’s not. Look at the times. Look at the content styles. Then adjust the types of content you share, where and when to align better with target demographic preferences and behaviors.
If we continue the analogy of personal relationships to social media, it’s a conversation. You must engage in that conversation, or you’re just spitting into the wind.
Watch for and respond to messages coming into your pages’ inbox. You CAN build autoresponders in several of the platforms, or pay for an autoresponder service. But I think social is more effective with real people answering real questions from other real people.
If someone comments on your social post, respond! Like their comment. Thank them for it. Answer their questions. Offer additional value.
We do know that the comment section of the internet can be a dark and seedy place. People will sometimes flex their keyboard muscles and say things that in the real world would result in a black eye! This doesn’t happen as often as you might think, unless your brand is deliberately posting content that’s divisive or controversial. If that’s your brand, negative comments come with the territory. Unless they’re threatening or dangerous, let them talk and don’t take it personally. Some of those comments can actually create more buzz for your brand!
It’s perfectly acceptable for you to determine the rules of engagement on your platform.
A Strong Social Media Strategy Connects Your Brand to Your People
The biggest hurdle for most professional folks on social media is making the plan. So take the time to work ahead and gain an edge by creating some great content. (Helpful hint: the best content is worth sharing.)
Sharing posts across multiple social media platforms helps you reach your target audiences in different places and ways unique to their digital footprint. A little overlap doesn’t mean you’re redundant. It allows you to have your message seen more than once – which keeps it top of mind!
You may find yourself at the edge of really being effective at your social media today. You know you want to connect with audiences on social media, but you also can’t seem to justify spending the time to do it yourself or with your in-house team.
I assure you it’s perfectly acceptable to say, “Maybe we can’t do this ourselves!” That’s where Grand River Agency comes into play, specializing in small businesses and nonprofits just like yours! We can help you do the hard work of creating and scheduling the content. Get in touch with us and let’s make it happen!
Vice President of Client Success, Grand River Agency
Josh is an expert multimedia professional with more than 25 years of experience in graphic design, digital media content production and community outreach. While working for several news and digital media agencies, as well as his own entrepreneurial endeavors, he has built and designed hundreds of websites and other forms of promotional content.
Josh has produced content for print, radio, TV and digital news and advertising firms. He has a keen eye for the
aesthetic, as well as a commitment to organizational visions. Josh has authored 12 books on self-improvement,
faith and career success.
