Posting consistently on social media is crucial for reaching your audience. However, manually creating and sharing new content every day can be time-consuming. This is where leveraging schedules and recurring posts can help.
Setting up automated schedules and recurring content allows you to “set it and forget it“, saving time while keeping your social profiles active. Let’s look at how scheduling and repeating posts works, tips for effectively automating your strategy, and how to maximize results while avoiding pitfalls.
Here are some of the key advantages of using schedules and recurring post-automation:
Pre-scheduling content in advance frees you from manually posting each day, saving hours.
You can carefully plan when to post each piece of content for maximum impact.
Auto-scheduling ensures your social accounts stay active with a steady stream of content, even when you’re busy.
Here are steps for setting up an effective automated posting schedule:
Analyze your analytics to determine when your followers are most active on each platform.
Develop evergreen content that is always relevant like quotes, tips, and educational posts.
Use your social media management platform to schedule evergreen content to repeat at optimal times.
Follow these tips for automating more of your social media content calendar:
Review historical analytics across each account to identify key scheduling times when engagement peaks.
Develop evergreen posts that will always be useful. These can be quotes, how-to’s, listicles, etc.
Use your scheduling tool to select posts for repeating on a recurring schedule.
A platform like Hootsuite or Sprout Social makes it easy to save posts for reuse and automate schedules.
While auto-scheduling saves time, you still need high-quality content for the best results:
Your scheduled posts should provide value for your audience rather than just filler.
Stay active in the community, responding to comments and questions on your posts.
Tweak your repeating post strategy over time based on performance.
There are some possible downsides to keep in mind with extensive automation:
Aim for a mix of scheduling and real-time interaction to stay genuine.
If contexts change, update your recurring posts to reflect current topics.
Balance evergreen and real-time content with videos, images, etc. for variety.
No, you should still interact in real time. However, scheduling some recurring posts helps maintain consistency.
Experts recommend no more than 50% of your posts should be recurring. The rest should be real-time and personalized.
Refresh your automated content every few months. Tweak posts as needed when contexts change.
Use each network’s analytics to see when your followers have been most actively engaging with your content.
Automating your social media calendar with schedules and recurring posts is an excellent way to save time while maintaining consistency. Plan evergreen content to schedule at your top times for each platform. But also make time for real-time interaction. Get the most from automation while avoiding overdoing it with the help of your analytics and social media manager.
Q: What are the benefits of scheduling recurring posts on social media?
A: Benefits include saving time, allowing planning and optimization, and providing posting consistency.
Q: What types of social media content work best for recurring posts?
A: Evergreen content like quotes, tips, how-to’s, lists, and educational posts tend to work well as recurring scheduled updates.
Q: How can I maximize the impact of my automated social media posts?
A: Create high-quality evergreen content. Engage your audience in real-time too. Adjust your recurring posts based on performance data.
Q: How often should I change up my recurring scheduled posts?
A: Industry experts recommend refreshing your automated post library every few months. Tweak as needed when contexts change.
Q: What percentage of my social posts should be automated recurring posts?
A: It’s recommended to have no more than 50% recurring posts. The rest should be real-time interaction and personalized content.