Social media promotion is perhaps one of the top ways to generating crazy engagement with your blog content. From growing brand awareness, driving fresh traffic to your site, building industry credibility, to boosting SEO ranking, strategically sharing your articles on social media will yield amazing results in your marketing strategy.
Yet, with more brands leveraging social to further their content marketing goals, how can you separate yourself from the sea of posts flooding your follower’s timeline? Or perhaps you have a unique message but are looking for proven tactics to effectively get it in front of your audience. In this guide, you’ll learn how to win in social media scheduling to bring more exposure to your content.
#1 Every Network is Different . . . Craft Messages Accordingly
The first thing to keep in mind is that each social media channel has its own culture, tonality, and expectations. A post that you share on Twitter may not resonate as well with your followers on Facebook. Every network is different and appeals to different audiences with certain intents.
Because of this, it’s important that you create your messages so it speaks to that particular audience to foster positive engagement and responsiveness with your content.
The following shares the types of content that are expected on each social network to give you an idea of how to craft your posts:
- Facebook – Ideal for sending traffic to websites and blog posts. Geared towards news, entertainment, and educational content. Videos are also creating massive engagement for users
- Twitter – Also suited for sharing blog posts or promoting website content. Is seen as a news platform as much as a social media network. Great emphasis placed on retweeting and curation
- Instagram – Extremely visual network best suited for strong visual brands. Not optimal for driving blog or website traffic yet short videos serve well for brand awareness
- Pinterest – Perfect for brands that appeal to women (Source: DMR). Also highly visual and is often used as inspiration for DIY projects
- LinkedIn – Professional network used heavily for sharing industry related articles and general professional content
#2 Share Content at Peak Times
Curious to know the best times to post on social media? The answer is simple. You want to post on social media when the people you want to see the content (your target audience) are on the network.
You see, sporadic postings will produce sporadic results. The key is to share content when you know your followers are most active and engaged to progress your social media marketing goals.
There are two ways to maximize on best posting times: following the best practice for each network and leveraging tools that shows when your unique audience is most responsive on social media.
Best Practices for Each Network
Many studies have illustrated and agreed on the optimal times to posting on the major social media networks for better engagement. This data is especially helpful if you’re just beginning to execute a consistent strategy. Here is a general guide to scheduling your content for greater success on social media:
- Facebook – The best days to post are from Thursday to Sunday for higher engagement. The best times include 9am, 1pm, and 3pm
- Twitter – Tweet during 12pm, 3pm, and 5pm-7pm. Wednesday’s around noon and 5-6pm are peak moments during workers’ breaks. B2B brands perform 16% better during business hours whereas B2C performs 17% better on weekends.
- Instagram – Peak hours for IG include 2am, 8-9am (best time), and 5pm. Posting a video at 9pm gets 34% more interactions. Monday and Thursdays also seem to be the best days for this network
- Pinterest – The weekends work best on Pinterest, with optimal times of 2pm, 9pm, and 2am. The worst time to post is during work hours while content posted on Saturdays between 8pm-11pm excel
- LinkedIn – The best time to post is midweek (Tuesday–Thursday) between 7-8am, 12pm, and 5-6pm. Business people are most likely to read LinkedIn in the morning like the newspaper
Leverage Social Media Management Tools
The most powerful data, however, is knowing when your unique audience is most engaged on social media. Although the mentioned posting times reveal what works across the board, you will experience real growth when you discover when your followers are most responsive with your content.
The good news is that there are apps designed to help you uncover this information. With consistent social media postings, analytic insights can disclose which times resonate best with your audience. Tools like Buffer, CoSchedule, and SproutSocial have the optimal posting time feature to advance you in this goal.
#3 Optimize on the Network’s Posting Frequency
Each social network has a different tolerance for how much content should be shared on a daily basis. Also known as posting frequency, failing to adhere to these guidelines will either turn your followers away from publishing too much content or have your audience forget about your brand altogether due to irregular postings.
Now, some social networks naturally have an expectation of lower posting frequency while others tend to have higher frequencies like Twitter. It’s always ideal to test to see what works well with your audience but you can use the following as a measuring stick for your content frequency:
- Facebook – 2 Posts
- Twitter – 5-20 Tweets
- Instagram – 1-2 Posts
- Pinterest – 5 Pins
- LinkedIn – 5 Posts (a week)
Conclusion
Social media is a solid channel to get more eyeballs on your content. The purpose here was to share how to effectively schedule your content using social to actually yield results from your marketing. When executing your content marketing on social media, leverage this guide to your advantage to eliminate guesswork and frustration from your efforts. With consistency, you’ll produce real change and growth from your strategy.
Much success,
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