Strategic Social Media Planning
Strategic Social Media Planning
Amanda Woolery – April 27, 2017
A strong social media presence is an essential tool for communicating with clients and customers. One of the biggest challenges in developing this strategy is choosing which platform is the best fit for your mission. Each site offers unique and distinguishable features and purposes. With social media, the marketplace and a good joke, everything relies on timing.
For the purpose of this post, the focus is going to be on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The most important thing to remember when trying to strategically post to reach your followers is understanding who your audience is. For example, if you know that most of your followers are young professionals, understanding that this audience may not be checking their social media as much throughout the work day will help you choose a time to post where they are more likely active on social media sites. If you have a good idea about who your audience is, you can use this information to try to predict when they are scrolling through their feeds, and therefore; seeing your posts.
For example, a restaurant or food truck is open certain hours, certain days of the week. While they’re open for business continuously, they have a pretty good idea when most people are thinking about eating. Social media can anticipate when to post based on conventional dining hours or craft messaging to encourage people to dine at alternate times with specials. That’s when posting creativity comes into play.
According to Fastcompany, the best time to post on Facebook is sometime during the afternoon (1 to 3 p.m.) Monday through Thursday. The idea behind this time slot is that most people experience an afternoon slump and are looking for a pick-me up, which often results in grabbing the phone and scrolling through Facebook. The worst times to post on Facebook include the weekends, early mornings and late at night.
As far as posting on Twitter, Fastcompany says the best time of day to post is lunchtime when many people are catching up on their Twitter feeds. With that said, this only applies to weekdays. Much like posting to Facebook, most people tend to not check social media as much on the weekends.
The Huffington Post reports the best time to post a picture on Instagram is around 5 p.m., with Wednesday being the best day of the week. The reasoning behind this time is that few people are actually posting at this time, so your post has a higher chance of being seen by your followers. Thus, higher engagement.
Also, while many people begin to pack up and leave work for the day, they may take a minute to sit down and scroll through their Instagram feed before heading for the commute home. A business catering to students might strategically figure other student behavior — study breaks, breaks between classes, before and after sporting events.
The idea behind choosing a good time to post onto social media is that the most people will see (and hopefully engage) with your posts. The more people who see and interact with your posts, the more followers you will eventually gain with these interactions.
While there is no perfect formula that will instantly gain you more followers, ensuring regular posts on all social media platforms will guarantee you a strong social media presence and eventually build your personal brand.
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Amanda Woolery is a senior public relations major who is graduating May 2017.
Texas State University, San Marcos, TX
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Texas State University, San Marcos, TX
Join BPR
Meetings Every Tuesday in OM 102C
ck17@txstate.edu
Facebook-f
Instagram
© 2020 Bobcat Promotions
OceanWP Theme by Nick