By Annie Urban
Building a consistent online presence may seem intimidating and time-consuming for small business owners with everyday time demands to handle daily operations.
And even if time allows, many owners become frustrated trying to stay on top of new trends emerging on a virtually weekly basis, ever-increasing social platforms and the wide variety of content out there in the “social world.”
One way to dial down the stress level of managing your social media if you can’t afford to hire someone to do it, whether in-house or using a social media marketing agency, is to use a scheduling tool.
This automated tool assists in scheduling multiple posts across several social channels. By doing this, an owner can plan further out, prepare their content and let the tool do the work after that.
Some of the benefits of a social media scheduling tool include:
Organization
Jumping back and forth between Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter can be overwhelming. Get organized by managing all of your accounts in one place without the hassle of jumping back and forth.
Scheduled Posts
Some SMB owners assume that the only way to post on social media is by logging into your account, taking/finding a photo, coming up with a caption, and then posting. The majority of social platforms don’t make it easy for you to schedule future posts. However, there are scheduling tools out there that provide the ability to schedule posts months in advance.
You are provided with a calendar view of your posts that include daily, weekly or monthly breakdowns of your scheduled content. Being able to plan and schedule posts will help you stay on track to achieving your goals.
Security
When you share your business’s social usernames and passwords with employees, you risk your business potentially getting portrayed in a negative light. A scheduling tool can add layers of security between employees and your accounts to help eliminate any misfired posts or any other problem that could arise. They also allow you to monitor every post before it publishes to eradicate any potential PR disaster.
Insights
Although social media platforms measure some performance and provide topline reporting, most do not go as in-depth as these tools do. Social schedulers provide data on post-performance, page performance, follower acquisition trends and other insights that can be very beneficial to future marketing efforts.
Here’s a list of some great tools – we are partial to Sprout Social at our agency.
And if that all sounds too complicated, reach out to us at TLC Marketing Consultants! We provide social content development, management blogging and more.