“Just put it up on social media.” It’s a flippant statement thrown out around mahogany tables by executives whose only knowledge of social media comes from the teenagers at home. Posting content on social media is more than a few words strung together with a good photo – or at least it should be. Winning content requires strategy, planning and timely execution. All of those things take time. 

Our team develops social media content regularly for our clients. As a result, we’ve all found little tips and tricks to help make the process smoother and more efficient. Lucky for you, we’re sharing our collective wisdom on the blog today! 

Plan, plan, plan! 

Kelli – I’m always thinking about social media so I can get ahead. I’m always looking for things like trends or other news stories that may apply to my clients, and throughout the month, I’ll drop relevant links, videos or infographics into a task or document. When I’m ready to actually build the next month’s schedule, I’ve already got several things I can pull from!

Lauren – I print out a calendar so that I can add relevant topics (like holidays, special days, company milestones, etc.) and look at it in a more visual-calendar way.

Gracie – Plan ahead! Create calendars of key industry events, relevant national holidays, motivational quotes etc. Taking the time up front to tackle these foundational documents will make your content writing process much faster. 

Use tech to your advantage. 

Murray – Scheduling social media through Facebook Business Suite is a lifesaver. Unlike Facebook Creator Studio, Business Suite allows you to schedule Facebook and Instagram posts at the same time. 

Carlee – The one tip that saves me the most time on social media is scheduling! Scheduling posts in advance lets you plan for the month ahead while saving time for in-the-moment content.

Chrisitna – My favorite social media shortcut is in Hootsuite, which lets you choose from a library of license-free photos to attach to your post. It comes in handy when you need an image to supplement your content.

Taylor – Check your analytics! Don’t waste time working on content that’s not moving the needle. If what you’re doing isn’t helping you reach your goals, it’s time to come up with a new strategy. 

Focus on brevity.

Brittany – The tip that saves me the most time is something that I only recently learned from Christina. When crafting posts for Twitter, set up a column in Excel with the following formula to automatically calculate the character count: =LEN(ROW NUMBER)+24. The “+24” is the length of a typical link, so you don’t have to take your post, copy, paste it into a character counter site and add the link to figure out if it will all fit.

Jenna – Aside from posts that require an in-depth explanation or a particular statement, I test every social post on Twitter. Because of its character limit, Twitter helps me format my posts to always include the most pertinent information up front and adjust them accordingly.

Whitney – Keep it simple. From content to graphics, brevity and conciseness are key. Social media is an area where you can keep your messages short and to the point. Should you need to elaborate, you can simply direct audiences to a more comprehensive platform such as a website. 

Get organized. 

Mary Carter – I find that labeling my graphics with dates or organizing my images into a specific folder is a great way to save time and minimize errors during scheduling. Also, spending a little extra time on the front end to test character limits, format hashtags (and links within posts) and adjust video aspect ratios is a great way to speed up the scheduling process. 

Courtney – Build a digital bank that is strong and diverse so that you aren’t searching for good visual assets at the last minute or building them from scratch. Strong visuals make strong content, and if you already have an arsenal to pull from, you’re ahead of the game.