By Lydia Barley

As all marketing professionals know it’s important to stay ‘on top of the game’ and social media is no exception. With the rise of social media, staying ‘on top of the game’ is becoming increasingly important. 79% of Internet users now use social networking sites and of those users 59% access social networking sites daily. While social media never sleeps it’s important to recognise that you do, so putting your life on hold or waking up at absurd times to post is not a viable option. There are a range of different social media scheduling sites that allow you to schedule posts to upload while you’re busy at work or tucked into bed!

What is Social Media Scheduling?

So, what is social media scheduling? Well, social media scheduling is the act of scheduling your posts to be posted at a particular time or date on your specified social media account/s; whether that be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter.

The Benefits of Social Media Scheduling

1. You can be active without being physically available. As mentioned previously you can schedule your content to upload while you’re busy at work or tucked into bed.
2. You can post even when you don’t have internet. Don’t stress about blackouts or setting up the hotel WIFI while you’re away, with social media scheduling you don’t need the internet to post.
3. You can spend more time creating better content. Rather than rushing to take a photo, write a caption and upload your post in time you can now sit there and truly think about your posts, allowing yourself to create better, more engaging content.
4. You will have less distractions. Social media can be a huge distraction. Rather than interrupting your work to post, social media scheduling posts for you, preventing you from getting distracted and allowing you to finish your work in peace.
5. You can post outside of business hours. With social media scheduling, you can schedule your posts to upload outside of business hours and on weekends. Remember, even though your business may not be open, social media is active 24/7.
6. Space out your posts. Rather than posting all your content at once, social media scheduling allows you to space out your posts, ensuring that you get the highest return on your content.
7. Manage multiple different accounts from one place. With social media scheduling you can post to all of your social media accounts in one place. In addition to this if you’re a marketing professional managing multiple different businesses at a time, you can post for all of those different businesses from one place.

Helpful Tips for Scheduling

– Engagement is key. Make sure to schedule your posts for the times that your engagement is at it’s highest.

– Spend as little as 10 minutes a day to schedule. Don’t overthink it. Scheduling is meant to make your life easy so truly embrace it and set a time limit for your scheduling.

– Always review what you’re scheduling. It’s best to double check what you’ve written and not only make sure there are no spelling mistakes but also ensure that your audience will understand and engage with the content you’re posting.

– Remember to check in on your post. Just because you can schedule your posts doesn’t mean you can now ignore them. Once your post is up check on it, monitor the engagement with the post and reply to any questions or concerns.

The Best Social Media Scheduling Sites

– Buffer

Buffer is known as ‘the social media assistant’ or the ‘siri of social media’. Simply let Buffer know what you want to post, where you want it to post and when you want it to post and Buffer will post them automatically based on your schedule. Buffer also offers mobile apps for both android and Ios devices, allowing you to truly work from anywhere.

– Hootsuite

Hootsuite is another popular scheduling site that makes finding, scheduling, managing and reporting on social media content easier. Hootsuite automatically schedules posts based on your schedule, ensuring that your social presence is active 24/7. Hootsuite allows you to bulk schedule; uploading and scheduling hundreds of messages at once. Similarly, to Buffer, Hootsuite also offers mobile apps for you to manage your scheduled content on the go.

 

Testing

One of the greatest ways to improve your performance on social media is continuous testing. Without testing to see what works and what doesn’t you would have no way of knowing which are the best days and times to post. This is why, especially in the beginning stages, testing is vital in identifying when and how to target your audience. The majority of social media management sites offer analytics features so you can measure your performance on each social media platform.  These features are important as they allow you to determine which types of content perform best and what posting time has the highest levels of engagement.  Both Buffer and Hootsuite offer analytics features, allowing you to gain an overview of your key metrics and build reports. Overtime with continuous testing and with the assistance of analytics you will gain insight into what works for you on each social media platforms.

Social Media Scheduling is the tool that you need to make your life easier. With a range of different benefits and features, there’s no reason for you not to utilise social media scheduling!

By Cheech Foo

Spotted in the wild on Wednesday the 9^th August 2017, LinkedIn has just launched this new video recording feature and we are super excited!

We are fortunate to have Ben Eatwell, Head of Marketing AUNZ, LinkedIn Sales & Marketing Solutions on board to provide official updates around this new feature (you’ll see him add value throughout the post as well):

To start off, Ben says regarding this new feature:

“Video is a popular way that our members consume information, share their perspectives and participate in conversations on LinkedIn. We are testing the ability for our members to record, upload, and post native video directly from the LinkedIn mobile app, so they can easily share their knowledge and insights to start conversations through the power of video.”

And so, over the past few days we’ve been experimenting on the parameters of the video publishing feature. Below are the key takeaways on what we’ve learned about the program so far that you can use to go and publish a higher quality video experience.

Before we go into best tips on how to publish a video – A question that we get asked every time in the past few days is: Where can I find this video recording feature?!

So to begin, let’s start with the basics.

One thing about the video feature is that, so far, it appears only LinkedIn Premium members are allowed access to this feature. We believe that it won’t be long until it will be rolled out to the entire LinkedIn network, so either get a free trial of LinkedIn Premium now or bookmark this page for when it does come to the masses…!

(We queried Ben on this, and he mentioned that they will keep all members up to date as soon as they can, so be sure to keep eyes and ears open on this one.)

Process on how to publish a video on LinkedIn.

Step 1. Open up LinkedIn App and click on the blue circle button on the bottom right.

Step 2. You should be able to see a video camera icon, next to the camera icon. If so, then just click on that.

Step 3. You will now be given two choices: either record a video or upload a video

Record a video option

 

Choose a video from the gallery option

Step 4. Once you recorded your video or selected a video you can start to create the text for the update. Don’t forget to also review your post settings. Depending on the nature of the content you can change how visible the post would be.

 Key learning so far within one week of the launch:

In just the past few days, we have learned heaps about how to get the best value out publishing a video on LinkedIn and we are excited to share this with you guys.

Ben, from LinkedIn ANZ, will kick off this section with some very valuable advice:

“LinkedIn is a professional platform…we recommend keeping the content you post contextually relevant i.e. keep that professional audience and why they are on the platform front of mind to ensure your content is relevant.”

Here’s what we found so far:

1. Videos can’t be longer than 10 minutes
2. After much testing, we recommend the videos be shot in a landscape mode, to cover as much real estate as possible and avoids any black bands showing.

See below the difference between portrait and landscape

• Link to a video recorded in a portrait orientation using LinkedIn native function
• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6303044397902757888

• Link to a video recorded on a Samsung S7 Edge in a landscape orientation
• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6303036027837775872

Length of posts

In the mobile feed, a video post will show up to 240 characters before it gets truncated the ‘…see’ function.

The aim is to experiment with this to see how users behave if you.

In the feed summary section, it will show up to 91 characters:

In short, our general recommendation is to think of the post in three parts and work out what posting methods work well

• 1-91 characters
• 92-240 characters
• 241+ characters

That’s it for now from the Ignite Search team!

Got any further questions? Comment on this below and we’ll help where we can.

Going forward, this page will be continuously updated as things change, so be sure to bookmark this, put this into your Evernote OR the easiest way of all: Just follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter!