Scheduling your tweets and status updates is one of the best ways to speed up your social media work as well as improve the overall quality of your communications. Scheduling allows you to create a coherent plan all at once, rather than just write what comes to your mind as it comes to your mind. Here are a few tips on using scheduling tools.
==> Morning, Evening and Late Night
What are the best time(s) to post? Generally, you want to be posting either in the early morning, around 8:00am, in the evening around 6:00pm or late at night around 11:00pm.
The early morning posts will attract people who open Facebook or Twitter first thing in the morning when they get to work.
The evening posts will get you the people who open Facebook or Twitter right when they get home from work.
The late night tweets will get you everyone who’s doing some late night surfing before they hit the sack. It’s also a great time to target programmers and self-employed people who work late nights.
==> Remember to Check Time Zones
Time zones matter. Scheduling your posts based on your own time zone is a no-no, even if you live in the United States.
You absolutely have to try to figure out what time zones your customers are in. Then you want to try to hit one of the times detailed above.
How can you find out? The best way is to use something like Google Analytics. Though this won’t give you data strictly on your Twitter feed or Facebook fans, it’ll still give you a good breakdown based on your audience.
Use it to figure out where your people are from, then post when they’re most likely to read.
==> Executing a Master Post Strategy
Scheduling your posts allows you to create a master strategy for all your posts in a week or even a month. You’ll be able to look at your posts as one coherent master strategy.
Think through this strategy before posting anything. More specifically, try to have posts that fulfill various roles, including:
* Posts that deliver high quality content
* Posts that build credibility
* Posts that ask questions and create interactions
* Posts that include videos
* Posts that sell
* Personal shares
==> The Occasional Spontaneous Share
Even in the most meticulous scheduling plan, you should still leave room for spontaneity. People can tell when you’re being self-expressive and often times the best way to be expressive is to be spontaneous.
Don’t hesitate to delete, replace or postpone a message if you have something important to say.
Planning your tweets can help you save time, think through your posting strategy on a longer-term horizon and help you broadcast a crystal clear message.