Are there only two types of social media managers?
You might imagine one type, the managers who post everything in the moment. They are always on, have their phone ready in their back pocket to whip out at any moment.
And you might imagine a second type– the super-scheduler who spends only their Fridays, masterfully queuing up content like a parent who cooks for the whole week, and divvies it all out into plastic containers in the freezer.
These two types might exist somewhere in the universe, but most social media managers fall in between. That’s because some content is best posted in the moment, some content is best scheduled ahead, and some content is best queued.
Posts to Send Right Away
There are some posts that only make sense in the moment. This is the type of content that can’t be prepared ahead of time. Let’s have a look at some examples.
Content from live events
You’ve invited a distinguished guest to speak at your event and they share something that your audience will love! This is great time to tweet an image of the speaker or publish a quote from the speech to Facebook. You can’t schedule this type of content!
Live video
Imagine you’re at the top of a mountain on a beautiful hike. You could take some photos to share later, but you feel that pull to go live on Instagram and show everyone the glory of the sunrise.
You want to chat with your followers (who also happen to be early risers) about where you are and how long it took you.
You can’t predict this type of content all the time. However, you can schedule a “save the date” post leading up to a live video, if you’re planning ahead (see the “schedule these posts” section below).
Congratulations and thank you posts
Did you just find out that someone in your community won an award? The moment you find out is probably the best time to send your congratulations. Same goes for a thank you— if someone does something nice, like share your blog post with their followers, you’ll want to thank that person in a timely fashion.
Maybe there’s a blizzard outside and you’re closing early. Or perhaps you want to gush about how beautiful it is outside today so your followers will get motivated to take your yoga class in the park. You can’t just schedule a rainy day post for another day and hope it’s raining that day, too.
Milestone celebrations
Unless it’s an anniversary, hitting a milestone can’t be timed. You don’t know when you’ll hit your 10,000th Facebook fan or the exact date the organization giving you an award will publish that press release.
You might know roughly down to the month or week, but day or hour is tricky. In this type of situation, you can put together a draft and save it until you know for sure when it’s appropriate to publish.
Posts to Schedule
As a marketer or business owner, you need to find ways to “scale up” your efforts and do more with your time.
Scheduling is helpful because you can compose posts in batches on one day and schedule these posts to publish throughout the week. When you group your tasks together in this way, you save time that is otherwise wasted switching from one task to another.
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