If you join a gym, but don't learn how to use the equipment, never join a class, and don't stick to a schedule and/or go regularly – you'll never see results – Right?! The same is true for social media. Social media requires ongoing nurturing and attention to maintain and grow a strong presence. It's easy to get overwhelmed with everything we need to do in order to maintain an effective social media strategy for your business – but it does not have to be that way.
My #1 tip for combating the overwhelm of social media management, is to schedule your posts to publish on your business pages. Once per week,take a couple hours to create and curate all the posts of each of your social media platforms. While some platforms, like Facebook, have their own internal scheduling tools, there are third party tools that provide some really great advantages over the internal tools to really help with simplifying social media strategy!
MeetEdgar
“Edgar is a social media management tool that saves hours a week by eliminating the time-consuming busywork from your scheduling routine. By storing all of your social media updates in an unlimited library, Edgar is able to share and reshare your content automatically. You never run out of things to post, your updates get the chance to be seen by new people, and you can finally take a break from babysitting your social media!”
Edgar is my social media scheduling tool of choice for posting on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn… and INSTAGRAM is coming soon! With Edgar I can upload my content, choose which platforms I want that content to publish to, and set a schedule for its posting and reposting! The customization options are robust without being confusing or overwhelming, and I maintain complete creative control of my content distribution. With the internal scheduling tools provided by Facebook, I was going in weekly to create new content (21-35 posts per week), and rarely recycling old content.
With Edgar I make use of my Chrome extension to add content to my library throughout the week, and my website's RSS feeds upload directly to Edgar as well. It's drastically decreased the amount of time I spend prep'ing for social media content each week, and has increased the reach of my content!
What differentiates Edgar from Buffer, Hootsuite, and other Scheduling Tools?
Edgar automatically reshares your social updates.
“A single Facebook update reaches barely 8% of its intended audience, and gets just 5% engagement from them – by publishing it more than once, Edgar exposes it to more and more people, giving your work the exposure it deserves.”
Unlike other tools that publish an update once and discard that content, forcing users to constantly refill their queues with completely new updates every week, Edgar saves every update you publish in a limitless, online library. When you input content to Edgar, you can choose whether you want the content to:
- Post once, at a specific day/time
- Post multiple times with a specific expiration date
- Post regularly in rotation with other content on an ongoing basis
Edgar uses a category-based scheduling system. As you upload content, you add it to a category and then you give that category a schedule so that you can control the frequency that those posts are published and shared.
How much time will Edgar save you?
As I mentioned before, I was scheduling 21-35 posts per week to my Facebook Page (yes, just Facebook). On top of that I have Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter – oh my!
On average, users save 8 hours per week – a totally realistic number based on my experiences. The reposting feature really frees you from the time-drain of having to constantly manage and monitor social media, and the inevitable burnout that follows. Edgar helps you post consistently, without having to constantly refill your scheduling tools with new content.
As a parent, we can never control when our kids will get sick, and that could translate into loss of work hours. Or, sometimes you just need a vacation. In either situation, Edgar has got you covered. He'll keep posting your quality content so that your followers never know you are gone! Whether you're at home or on vacation, your social posts will always go out. It's a great social media insurance policy!
Don't Forget This!
Scheduling your posts is only one piece of your social media strategy… the other (arguably more important piece) is to be SOCIAL. Even though Edgar allows you to effectively maintain a steady flow of social media posts across your favorite social media platforms, you still have an obligation to pop on over to your Facebook Page regularly to engage and interact with your audience.
People do business with people they like – give them an opportunity to get to know you! If someone takes the time to comment on your post, you should take the time to give them a personalized reply in return. Use the opportunity to get to know your fans, and show them that they are important to you.
Edgar will still save you a TON of time – because they make the scheduling piece easy – but don't think that it means you never have to show up and engage on your Page. I like to set aside 15 mins every day to clear my inbox (which includes Facebook and Instagram comments now). My “best practice” is to do that daily, and most of the time I do. Every once in a while though, when life happens, there may be a couple days between checking in – which on occasion is acceptable!
Next Step: Get Edgar!
What are you waiting for? Go check Edgar out and give it a try today!