Your Social Media Posting Checklist for 2019
Post Cafe’s entire job is to make your life easier. It has been our goal from day one to offer you tools and tips that you can immediately implement to improve your social presence. That’s why we’ve created this simple social media posting checklist to help you kick off 2019 the right way.
1. Determine Your Main Social Media Goal
Savvy brands are very intentional with their social media posts. They set specific goals to maximize their return on investment. To do this, you need to set a SMART goal for 2019 and outline how you plan to achieve it (otherwise you’ll just be shooting in the dark). SMART goals are: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely. As you invest time into creating your social media posting goals, make sure that your SMART goal aligns with your corporate values. This will help inspire you to keep posting momentum going strong all year.
Not sure where to get started? A few common social media posting goals include:
- Brand awareness
- Community engagement
- Content exposure
- Lead generation
- Website traffic
2. Learn Your Audience
Your success greatly relies on your understanding of your customers, their needs, wants and values. To do so, you must clearly define both your goals and your target audience. This insight will help you create relevant content, monitor prospects and achieve valuable conversations. Dig into details such as their age, gender, occupation, education, and also specifics like values, lifestyle, and consumer behavior (the when, where, and why they buy).
Once you have determined your audience profile, it will be time to move to the next step on your social media posting checklist.
3. Create a Content Calendar
Part of your social media posting attack plan, should be a step-by-step calendar of your tactical moves. A social calendar breaks down your bigger brand story into a smaller checklist. On their own, each task may seem insignificant, but collectively, they get your message across and inspire action.
This is your guide to ensure your purpose is on point for the long-term and a way to help you stay accountable to your goals (see number 1). One of the easiest ways to structure your social media posting calendar is with an excel spreadsheet. Track the who (target audience), the what (message), the where (blogs and social media platforms) and the when (day of week and time of day).
4. Post at Optimal Times
Posting the right content, at the right time is crucial to maximize your efforts in 2019. Timing is everything. But, trying to find out the best time to post on any given platform is a lot like whack-a-mole — user data is constantly changing. While studies reveal general recommendations (for example, Facebook tends to have higher engagement later in the week and between 1pm-3pm), you’ll have to do a little leg work to research what days and times are best to post based on when your own specific audience is online and engaged.
So, how do you find the optimal time for your own unique audience? Dig into the data regarding the social media habits of your followers through analytics tools like Google Analytics, Tweriod, Facebook Insights, etc. Make an effort to review these metrics on a monthly or quarterly basis, to fully understand when your audience is most responsive throughout the year.
5. Prioritize Visuals
Visuals are extremely important on social media. Since the human brain processes visuals faster than text, it’s the perfect way to communicate a message in today’s attention-hungry world.
When you don’t have your own branded content available, photo sites are fantastic tools for social media posting – just make sure you have permission to share. So, where can you find free images that are cleared to use on your social media posts? While many images are protected by copyright, you can still find high-quality images that are free to use if you know where to look.
We’ll let you in on some of our favorite free image sites (some require attribution, some don’t).
6. Respond and Engage
People want to be a part of something special, something significant. They want the real deal. Posting is one thing… make sure to also take the time to engage with your audience and listen to your customers. Make them feel totally heard.
Think about it, conversations in person are usually a two-way street; the same rules apply online. Beyond the fact that it’s proper etiquette, responding can help you increase credibility and show you care. It can even turn haters into lovers. In other words, just be social. If people like you, they will find reasons to buy from you.
Engagement is the goal. Social media tools will help you get there.
7. Be Smart About Your Time
As your audience grows and your engagement strengthens, you must become more efficient at posting, responding to messages and staying ahead of the competition. Consistency with posting relevant and useful content will make you a dominant player in your market.
So, don’t be afraid to source out some of your content if you don’t have the time to create your own. And use social media posting tools (like Post Café) to help you along the way. Mix it up. Create some of your own live posts, but then automate others to save time and money.
Hey, we’re all about efficiency this year!
8. Measure Results
You’re in luck! Social media is one of the most measurable platforms around. Every Facebook link share, Twitter update, LinkedIn post can be monitored with tools to help you determine what’s working and what’s not. No doubt, you’ll have some failures mixed in with some successful posts. Constantly test and be curious about what’s working…and why. Find out what motivates your audience, engages your prospects and entices them to take action. Have fun with it, but most importantly, make sure you know what’s happening behind the scenes.
This valuable feedback not only helps you learn how to make improvements, but also helps you refine your posting attack (aka your goals) …which brings us to our final checklist point: reuse and refine.
9. Reuse & Refine
Get even more out of your social media content by reusing and refining what worked well. This way you’ll not only save time, but also generate easy engagement by giving your audience what they want! Whether you’re sharing a similar message or visual across different channels, boosting a high engagement post or grabbing elements from your most popular blog post and serving them up on social, it’s easier than you think.
Hey, when you’ve spent so much time and work creating a masterpiece, you want to see it reach even higher heights.
Ready to take your brand’s social media posting to the next level this year? Get strategic about your goals and smart about your time. Call us at 732-218-9377 to find out how Post Café can help you crush 2019!
