Save Time and Schedule Your Blog Posts on Social Media!

bySelenityjade

661 followers

5 years ago

Heyla, WA! I thought I'd pop in for a quick blog post about an excellent time management strategy when you're posting content on your blog.

Don't worry, I'll be short and sweet, I promise.

We're All Busy

Let's face it. Affiliate marketing, blogging, coaching, writing content, managing your blog's social media pages, email lists, YouTube videos, and keeping up with the latest SEO news and marketing tips is very time-consuming.

I know I can spend all day 'working' and not really accomplish a lot if I don't manage my time properly. Content always comes first of course, but like everyone else, I can hop on Facebook or Twitter to check my website's social posts and turn around to find two hours gone. Vanished. Poof!

I have too much to do to keep doing that.

Schedule Your Posts!

The best resource for saving me time so far has been to schedule my blog posts on social media. Did you know, you can share the same post you wrote two months ago, and schedule it out every 2-3 months and post it again?

Depending on what tool you use, I'm partial to Hootsuite and Tailwind, though eClincher is awesome too, as is Buffer, if you're into that one. Or you could invest in the Blog2Social plugin on your website, but I believe it's very minimal use unless you're using the premium version. But there are a ton more options for you if you want.

If you want more analytics of your posts, go to the services that keep more detailed track of engagement. If you just want a scheduler, go for a simpler tool.

Then whenever you post a new post on your website, go through, create a written post (with link) and hashtags, customize it however you want, and schedule it to post every couple months. Boom. After a while, you'll be sharing content and old content regularly.

You are probably already aware most people don't see your posts on Social Media when you update your website. Take advantage of that be reposting! You can then schedule other posts around the blog posts scheduled, so that you're consistently posting to your various social media accounts.

Schedule those posts every 2 to 3 months for the next YEAR if you want. Then when you do your weekly social media planning, you might only need to do a couple random posts here and there amid your already scheduled blog posts.

Change Your Mindset - Scheduling!

Get in the habit of 'scheduling'. While lots of content is excellent, you want to be consistent in your content creation. Some weeks are going to be super productive with your writing. Some weeks, you're going to not be as productive, maybe because you caught the flu or your day job is crazy around Christmas or your kids are home for the summer. Create articles and schedule them on a set schedule (however many times a week you want to post).

You don't want to post 12 articles in one week and nothing for three weeks. Instead, schedule those articles out to 3 times a week for four weeks, and during that time, you could be writing more, posting to your social channels, researching, creating YouTube videos, etc.

Scheduling is a very important part of blogging. Start by scheduling those blog posts on Social Media first. You'll be amazed at how much time you'll save.

Plus, if you end up in the hospital or in an accident (hopefully not!), your work will not suffer as much thanks to scheduling!

Maybe Scheduling Coming to Site Content Soon?

I made a suggestion to Kyle about Site Content publishing and creating the ability to schedule blog posts. He said they'll be adding new features this fall and I'm crossing my fingers that THAT is one of them.

I love using Site Content for everything, but I want to schedule my blog posts. Why?

Consistency vs. Quantity of Content

I post once a week right now as a 'test' to see if more content equals more traffic or if more consistent equals more traffic.

There are two schools of thought on this. Some believe, like Neil Patel, that consistency is more important to SEO than quantity. He suggests that posting once a week or twice a week or three times a week at the same days consistently boosts your rankings more than cranking out a bunch of content some weeks and little to nothing other weeks.

Here we're taught that content is king and the more you have the better.

I think there's something to both methods, but I prefer (so far) the consistency method. Here's why.

Pros of the Consistency Method

• Some weeks I write a LOT, other weeks, I have problems with finding time, this way, I'm always posting content EVERY week.
• Your readers and subscribers know what day you are going to be posting
• My quality is better. Instead of rushing to post a bunch of content, I have time to go over it more, and check it a day (or more) before publishing by giving it another edit
  • This is actually because I take time away from the article and have a clearer picture of mistakes and weird sentences that I need to fix. Seriously. Take a couple days before posting an article and do another quick read-through and see if you see anything else you missed. It helps a LOT since I can't afford to pay an editor for myself yet!
• More time to update old content, schedule social media posts, go out and comment on blogs in your niche, etc.
• Schedules show discipline and professionalism. Think of your favorite blogs to read. Do they post daily because they have multiple writers? Or do they post weekly, because they have one writer? Think of any blogs that are exceptions to this, and don't have a schedule but are seriously freaking excellent and successful.
• If you have mutliple writers, you could consistently post once a day or twice a day, even! That's using BOTH methods.

Cons

• No scheduling ability in Site Content so I have to come here on my scheduled days to post to my website
• Impatience to have the new content read (I just created my new site, so I'm impatient sometimes LOL, but this will go away as I keep working).

Pros of the Quantity of Content Method

• The more content you write, the better your writing gets
  • That said, this same pro goes along with consistency method if you're able to churn out scheduled posts 3x a week
• The more content you write, the better chance you get ranked well for one of those posts
• Google does like updated websites
• Best to get a site off the ground if you can roll out the content you need faster, so it doesn't look 'unfinished'.
• People don't have a chance to 'forget' you if they see you constantly posting

Cons

• Quality is worse. More content equals less time making sure everything is accurate and you catch errors and you don't have as much time making things pleasing to your readers. Yes you can go back and edit old posts, but I prefer to make my posts excellent the first time it's live. I edit later for added content to the post.

My Preferance

I prefer consistency over quantity. I'm testing my theory with my new website. It's actually got ranked REALLY high on the first day a post was indexed for the WRONG keyword, so of course it dropped the very next day. LOL!

You might be saying, but any rank no matter what keyword is good!

Not when you ranked for a term that is linked to another 'brand' in my niche! They were searching for a rescue group from Canada that is viral on YouTube called TinyKittens. I wrote a post about the Kitten Lady's book, Tiny But Mighty.

But someone Googling TinyKittens is not looking for the Kitten Lady, at all. So of course, my bounce rate was 100% for the two clicks I go for that mistake (I got like 16 impressions)

Either way, I'm testing this. I may increase my posting schedule of course, but I wanted to test it with a 'low' number of posts per month (once a week right now) first, and it gives me time to promote or be active in my niche.

I'm not saying the training here is wrong, definitely not. Churning out content will likely get you ranked. But I personally like consistency, and like having the ability to schedule content (and social media posts!), so that when I'm too busy with my day job, I still know my site is "updated".

Your Opinions?

So today, ask yourselves (and tell me below too!)

1. What's YOUR preferred way to post? Consistently on the same day? Or just writing content and publishing it whenever you can? Or do you do both?
2. Do you schedule your blog posts on Social Media? What do you use?
3. Have you had success with either of these methods?

Lemme know below!

PS: I'll be creating a training here about making your own blogging planner. The ones I saw online weren't what I wanted exactly, so I'm creating my very old planner and sharing with you what I'm putting in it and how to make it! Would you be interested in that? (Thanks Swangirl for reminding me about blogging planners, I'm a planner nerd! I have stickers and everything!)