If you missed Part 1, read it here.
Now that you’ve figured out all of your content and started creating it (well you’ve at least thought about the content you want to create), you’ve definitely wanted to start thinking about the content you’re going post! It’s time to go through the next step that has helped us stay on top of our social media. I hope it helps you!
2. SCHEDULE IT OUT
Another daunting task of mass social outreach is that you actually have to post what you create. Unless you have endless intern hours, scheduled at exactly the right times, and someone who doesn’t realize what they’re getting themselves into, you are going to need help.
This is where that plan you made (or are thinking of making) comes in really handy. Since you have all of your ideas and content mapped out, you can now put that into a social media scheduler and viola! you’re done. If only it were that easy!
I started out by scheduling everything using Facebook’s built in scheduler. I had all of our accounts set to post from Facebook over to Twitter and Instagram, well, let’s just say it got neglected. That’s not to say this isn’t an okay strategy, it will work for some; but it’s not the best. When you post from Facebook to Twitter, the images can get lost and they show up as a link instead of the actual image. If your post is too long, Twitter will just cut it off due to the character limitations, and so on.
Instead of the native schedulers, you should think about using a program that will help you schedule your posts directly to each platform. There are a dozens of schedulers out there; we’ve used two, so that’s all we can reference: Buffer and Hootsuite.
Over the summer while we were traveling for NTS Camp, we used Buffer to schedule out and produce instant posts to all of our social platforms. It was not a good experience! The app was buggy, it didn’t work with Instagram, the team couldn’t post without approval, and so on. After the summer, we switched to Hootsuite. I have never been happier! Hootsuite isn’t very expensive (plus there are non profit discounts of 50%) and it works with Instagram (a huge bonus). The app is easy to use and very stable.
While I recommend Hootsuite as a program, what I really recommend is that you use something besides Facebook. It will save you time and headache in the long run. As a pastor or youth leader, we all know how precious time is and social media will suck away time without you even noticing. These first two steps should help you plan ahead now to avoid losing precious hours later.
**Extra Tip: Don’t forget to be spontaneous on with your audience, a plan is great, but interject posts into your plan to keep people from getting bored.
Kyle Wood
Director of Operations & Communications
Never The Same
© 2015, Never The Same