Scheduling social media posts is similar to batching tasks because it’s all done at once, rather than spread out sporadically. There are so many benefits to sharing your content this way.
One of my many services includes scheduling social media on my clients’ behalf, and if this is a service you’re interested in, I can tell you what it involves, on your end, as well as my own.
First steps
There are a couple of things that need to be in place before I can help you. From a VA standpoint, it’s important to have a clear idea of what is going to be shared through your social media.
- Are you only sharing your own material?
- If you share articles from others, what types of material are you looking at sharing?
- Are you including motivational quotes and images in your social media?
- If your website has a blog, how often are you writing your own posts? Keep in mind, the more often you share a blog post from your website, the better your SEO will be.
- Would you consider a monthly theme, to make it easy on yourself and your audience?
- Which 3rd party scheduler will you be using?
That last point stumps some people. If only sharing to a Facebook page, the answer is simple, because you won’t need a 3rd party scheduler to get the information out there. Unfortunately, if you want to schedule posts to LinkedIn, Twitter, etc… you will need a 3rd party scheduler.
But what exactly IS a 3rd party scheduler?
It’s a stand-alone platform that is used to schedule your posts to various social media platforms. If you want to share to more than just Facebook, signing up for an account with a 3rd party scheduler is crucial. Common schedulers include:
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
- SmarterQueue
- MeetEdgar
- Later
They all generally work the same way: you sign up for a free account or choose a payment plan. If you’re having your virtual assistant help you with scheduling, they can help you with the rest.
Once you have an account set up, you can share your account login credentials with your VA through LastPass.
How I work
Once I have a social media action plan or general outline, plus login credentials, I get to work.
Generally speaking, I prefer to have everything scheduled a month in advance. At the beginning of the month, I like to discuss the outline with my clients. My busiest clients often find it’s easiest to come up with a monthly theme, because they know I’ll run with it and research relevant articles and quotes to fit in with their theme.
If Client A would like to share two articles, authored by other individuals, per day across their social media platforms, I’ll find at least 62 relevant articles written by other folks. I’ll pop the article titles and URLs into a Google spreadsheet.
If this client would also like to add in a motivational quote or a testimonial they’ve received, once per day, I will research quotes or images to fit in with these, and place them in a Google doc. Then I’ll send the links to these documents to my client for their review.
Scheduling
I like to have all of this completed by mid-month so I can schedule everything for them by the 20th. This allows for tweaks, edits and other small tasks that may be necessary. Sometimes my client will come across an additional article they’ve found and they’d like me to add it in. No problem.
I’ll pop into my clients’ 3rd party scheduler and plug all of the above into their scheduler. Then both my client and myself can rest easy, knowing the following month is ready to go. – Yes, I worry about my client’s social media, especially…
When something goes wrong
Social media is far from perfect and 3rd party schedulers are no different. I have had clients forward me error messages that they have received, and while this can be very frustrating, it happens. Thankfully, not too often, though!
Once I receive these forwarded emails, I get to work, troubleshooting the problem and seeing if I can fix it. If I can’t fix it myself, I’m only too happy to submit a problem ticket on their behalf. Often, it’s a glitch on their end and all ends well.
I’ve had clients tell me that their audience thinks they are “all over social media”, when in reality, they don’t really even think about it, because I’m thinking about it for them. That’s when I know I’ve done a good job.
Why not give SmarterQueue a try? Get a free extended trial period with this link.
Book a free consultation call and let’s discuss setting up a third party scheduler for your social media.
