Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and all our social media tasks can be overwhelming. Managing to write, post, tweet and share it all only to discover that it’s on the wrong days, at the wrong times for maximum impact is just disheartening. For this reason, I decided to piece together a primitive social media calendar and begin to organize this chaos.
I knew that creating the social media calendar would help me get the most bang-for-my-buck when I spend my time posting. I also felt it would help me work with more purpose, focus and regularity. The first step in this process was to create the most effective social media schedule based on the platforms that I implement most frequently.
Because this gets a little wonky when you implement multiple social media tools, I wrote things down as I went along, in order to share the process. Perhaps you too, will find this type of organization useful in your blogging endeavors. In general for bloggers, social media managers and small businesses, this type of calendar provides for optimum scheduling of:
- Blog posts, contributions by guest authors
- Gathering, creation and sharing of other content such as ebooks, infographics, Instagram, etc.
- Posting and sharing on Facebook
- Creating finding, pinning and re-pinning content on Pintrest
- Creating, managing and participating in group conversations on LinkedIn
- Creating blog content for LinkedIn
- Reading, tweeting and retweeting on Twitter
I began with a schedule of best days and times to post based on social media platforms/target audience. You may want to make several calendars, one for each client, or one for each platform based on your usage and volume. You may be on more platforms than I have included here. I am not on Google+, but I included it because it is on my 2015 social media plan. Another blog post I suspect.
| Platform | Good Days/Times | Yucky Days/Times |
| 1pm-4pm peak: Wed. 3pm-4pm 751 million mobile FB users check early/not during work day | 8pm-8am avoid weekends | |
| 1pm-3pm begins building after 11am Mon.-Thurs. use goes up on weekends short tweets are better ask for re-tweets use 2 hashtags/tweet | 8pm-9am traffic fades after 3pm avoid Fri. after 3pm | |
| 7am-9am or 5pm-6pm 12pm-1pm peak: before & after business hours, Tues.-Thurs. | 10pm-6am traffic fades 9am-12pm 1pm-5pm avoid Mon. & Fri. | |
| Google + | 9am-11am traffic builds after 9am peak: during work hours | 6pm-8am traffic fades after 5pm avoid evenings |
| Pintrest | 2-4pm or 8pm-1am traffic builds after 12pm peak: Sat. morning appeals to fashion stylist, home decorators, party planners, DIY’s, health products, foodies, etc. visits last over 16 min., longer than other platforms | 5pm-7pm traffic fades after 5pm avoid late afternoon |
| Blog | Mon., Fri. and Sat. at 11am posts regularly and consistently post links to blog as previously detailed | 11pm-8am |
Content marketing has a lot of moving parts that all come together at different times. Creating and using a social media calendar is a critical element of an effective strategy.
I used a great deal of information from many super infographics, blog posts and articles, consolidating it into the table above, focusing only on the platforms that I utilize. I am certain this information is changing as I write this, so if you have more, better or conflicting information that could expand our knowledge, please share with the group. We all do well when we combine what we know.
Good luck with your social scheduling.
Thanks for Reading!
Linda Amerigo
V.P. Social Media Marketing
Technology Instructor
Universal Sports Education USE
mailto:[email protected]
www.amerigoconsulting.com
