Everything You Need to Know About Social Content Scheduling

[Originally published on the Dash Hudson blog.]

If you’re not planning your Instagram content ahead of time, you’re losing out. Here’s what you need to know about social scheduling and how to approach your planning to optimize both your time and your content’s impact.

Donut waste your time with posting on the fly.

We’ve learned a few important lessons having spent the last few years going super deep into every single obscure crevasse of social media marketing. For starters, the fact that the discipline is much more complex than anyone had ever anticipated. Because it looks really fun (and it is), a lot of folks didn’t take the job seriously at first and falsely believed it required no significant thought process. There’s nothing like being underestimated to then plow ahead and become one of the most important positions any brand can fill in their marketing departments. 🦁

Another important lesson we’ve assimilated is that social media managers need to be multitaskers to succeed at their jobs. It’s just the nature of the beast. If juggling’s not your thing, this line of work is probably not for you. Social editors need to be able to think strategically, come up with content plans, master social media tools, be excellent at teamwork, be a liaison between the marketing and creative departments, must have an eye for beautiful imagery as well as wit for on-brand captions. Woof.

Another thing that’s required from social editors is being tapped into the new new. Functionality updates are constantly being churned out by platforms and having a capability of adaption that is superior than most is key to being able to embrace features like Stories and Instagram Live as they’re released.

Marketing through Instagram requires a ton of agenda flexibility because — surprise! — the Internet never sleeps. Posting is an everyday requirement. Even on evenings. Even on weekends. Even on holidays. We’re all well aware of the fact that Instagram’s API doesn’t allow third party apps to go all the way; a human must hit publish for a post to go live. And because consistency is a prerequisite for a killer Instagram account, taking a break can be unforgiving.

Sure, social media marketing remains about posting beautiful images that pertain to a business’ story, but everyone who knows anything about branding and marketing is well aware that the layers are thick, numerous, and complex. While your parents probably still don’t quite get why your job is important, we all know that it’s vital to all marketing activities and it’s a huge piece of the brand-building puzzle.

It’s in that very spirit that we pen this ode to content scheduling. If you’re all about conquering social media marketing best practices, keeping a content calendar and mastering the art of scheduling can be insanely beneficial, and actually make you so much better at your job. So let’s get into why you should schedule Instagram posts in advance, how to go about optimizing that great content, and how its impact can be maximized.

This will give you the edge and some extra time. Boom.

There’s no better tool to save you time and to make you more efficient.

1. Hone Your Aesthetic

As the middleman between your brand’s strategy and its public-facing image, you’re responsible for crafting its Instagram visual identity. That means the look of your content needs to be on point. It will inform everything curation, creation and distribution, and will make planning out your social content that much easier. Brand-building requires consistency and honing a specific image is not only a strategic move, but also one that will make your business appear more attractive.

Figure out your content pillars, the appropriate color palette, preferred filters, as well as your brand voice and tone, and work your magic.

Benefits:

Knowing and mastering your brand’s aesthetic will ultimately guide the creative that you’ll either produce or source, and will take the guesswork out of what type of visuals you should post. Same goes for the tone of voice in your captions.

2. Use a Scheduler

A scheduler is way clutch for planning out content (duh). Because that’s where you’ll be saving all of your visuals once you have them. The Dash Hudson Instagram platform has a killer multitasking scheduler that enables maximal efficiency. It’s kind of a heaven-sent solution. Here are its key features:

• Upload photos and videos to either store in a content bank or to add to your calendar to be scheduled in advance.
• Save high performing, high quality UGC directly into the scheduler to either put in the calendar immediately or to save for a later time.
• Preview your feed to make sure that its overall aesthetic will meet your audience’s high standards, and rearrange its look with the drag and drop function.
• Schedule your photos during optimal time slots based on your own posting history by dragging the images directly onto those times in the calendar.
• Get a push notification from the DH mobile app when it’s time to post so you don’t need to constantly be watching the clock.

Benefits:

• Preview the look of your feed in advance. No more overall aesthetic guesswork.
• Increase your post engagement thanks to the ability to schedule when your audience is most active.
• Never be at a loss for what image to post or what caption to write, especially in the middle of your boozy Saturday brunch.
• Prepare in advance for special holidays or occasions you want to create a social dialog around (i.e. national doughnut day 🍩 ).

3. Make Your Content go Even Further

Kill multiple birds with one stone! You can actually monetize your Instagram gallery while scheduling your posts in advance with Dash Hudson’s scheduler. We’ve stressed the importance of making your content go the extra mile many times over by utilizing your link in bio as a referral conduit. Spoiler alert: you can also increase your revenue by doing the same thing.

And there’s never been a more seamless, easy way to go about it. You can add any link to any visual once it’s been uploaded to the scheduler, and before it gets published. That means that it will automatically be active and populate when the post goes live.

Benefits:

• Increase your sales.
• Drive more traffic.
• Bring your audience more value.

You loving life with your squad after all your content’s been scheduled and you have a bunch of free time.

If you want to maximize your time and become more efficient with your current resources, planning out your posts in advance is key. You’ll achieve peak productivity as well as drive better results with your content once you really own that calendar. Then you’ll give yourself a pat on the back for being so wise.

Interested in learning more about content scheduling and our sophisticated tools? Get in touch today.