Save Time and Have a Calendar
You can save time by creating your social media messages in advance. It even becomes easy to manage all your accounts with useful and relevant tools. When you're preparing multiple posts at the same time, it allows you to save precious minutes. You then don't have to log in each time to post your message of the day and can continue to attend to your usual business. To help you with this, I advise you create a publications calendar. Write down all the interesting ideas, then choose the best time to publish them according to your community and platform. Moments can vary from one target audience to another. It is therefore important to know this data in order to have better results. The content must also be adapted from one platform to another.
Stay Spontaneous and Relevant
However, there is a danger in creating all of your publications in advance and missing the boat or no longer being relevant. Most of the time, a publication will work, regardless of the circumstances. However, as we saw with the Covid-19 crisis, there were several messages that were published automatically and no longer made sense. I saw gyms bragging about their group fitness classes in April when everyone had to be in lockdown at home. This type of publication should be used after the confinement. This is the time to mention online courses. It's all about being relevant.
My advice: Stay flexible and adapt. Over time, we can become lazy, especially when we create a lot of publications in advance. Yet that makes the difference between a relevant social media account or not. If you see a trend on the horizon, postpone some of your posts. I would even say that 10 to 20% of your social media posts should be written spontaneously. It's often the content that has the most impact!
Do it the Day Before
It's not always easy to find inspiration for your publications. Don't force things, contact your customers only if you have something useful or relevant to say. One way to always be on the lookout for what's happening on the web and what people in your company think is to do it the day before. Be where your customers are, find the pages that are relevant to your business. Once you have your list, try taking a look at these pages once a week. You will be able to see what your customers’ interests or concerns are. This information is quite valuable because it can help you better meet your customers' needs with appropriate content. If necessary, there are also several online tools such as Google Trends to find what is trending more easily.
Let’s say you have a restaurant; you might notice on social media that your target clientele is becoming increasingly concerned with climate change. You may think that this does not really affect your establishment, but on the contrary. Mention on social media what you are doing to preserve the environment as it will be relevant to your target audience.
Some Tools to Simplify the Management of Your Social Media
I mentioned that there are tools that can help you manage your social media more easily. As a communications officer, I find these tools make my life a lot easier. First, there are dashboard-like tools that allow you to manage all your different accounts in one place. This is very helpful if you have several different pages to manage. These boards also allow you to plan the publication of all your content and have access to statistics. The main social media management tools are Hootsuite, Buffer and Later. These three companies also offer free versions that you can try before you make your choice.
As well, if you don't have graphic skills, I advise you use platforms to help you create nice montages for your pages. Your publications need to be attractive and interesting for them to be noticed. One of the well-known players in this field is Canva. Try using the same templates and colors of your brand to increase your reputation and reach.
In conclusion, yes you should create your posts in advance. However, also create spontaneous content so that you don't miss out on trends that might be advantageous to your business. There are several tools that can give you a hand when creating your content, so feel free to take a look and save yourself some time when working on things the day before. All this will help you manage your social media content like a pro!