A step-by-step guide for successfully managing social media profiles

Neža Renko21.07.2020Marketing

Managing a community on social media is anything but a piece of cake. There’s always so much to do, from answering the same old question for the thirtieth time to coordinating plans with the sales team and tracking the competition, not to even mention preparing unique weekly posts.

Tackling so many challenges while constantly looking for new ideas is a shortcut to losing control over the profiles you’ve been working so hard on. Unfortunately, the drop in performance is almost inevitable in such cases as inconsistency in your posts leads to lower engagement, consequently limiting your reach and ultimately resulting in lower sales.

Luckily, there’s a simple solution: you need to get organised!

Organising the content creation process will benefit you as the author of the posts as well as those following your channel. Learn more about which steps and tools – and we speak from experience – can help you reach this goal.

Establish a (morning) routine

Just like you’ve established a morning routine, making sure you don’t arrive to work with your hair all messed up and in your pajamas, you can establish a digital routine, making sure to tick all the boxes on your to-do list.

For example: upon arriving to work, first check the FB page. Answer all the questions in your inbox, respond to the comments and invite people to follow you; You can do the same with Instagram and any other channels you also manage.

When finished, quickly check the content calendar, make some last-minute corrections to today’s posts and publish them, do some boosting if needed, top it all off by skimming through analytics and relevant news, and voila – in less than an hour, you’re done and you’ve got nothing more to worry about. Simple, right?:)

Work in advance

How far ahead you should schedule your posts depends on your preferences as well as the niche you or your client operates within. If you can’t get enough materials or if the information you are about to post changes several times before the deadline, it surely makes no sense to plan the content months ahead and correct the copy all the time.
Luckily, in most areas, you can actually prepare the posts at least a week or even two weeks in advance. And this has many advantages:

A general overview. Posts that are prepared at least 14 days in advance will provide a great overview of your profile. Are too many posts sales-oriented? Are you repeating virtually the same copy over and over? Is there any post category that has got a cult status?
Time optimisation. A schedule that you prepare in advance will help you optimise your time as you’ll create a monthly supply of posts in one go. For brainstorming new ideas (or doing research, preparing creatives etc.), you’ll thus need just two sessions per month. Of course, this approach will keep you busy for quite some time, but on average, it’s still quicker than preparing each post separately, having to “warm up” and brainstorm for 15 minutes every day. .
No worries anymore. You’ll reduce all the stress that comes with preparing new posts to just one day in a week, leaving constant worrying behind. You’ll also minimise your chances of ruining your evenings by remembering that you’ve forgotten to publish today’s post. :)

Tools for managing your posts

Posts require inputs from all sides – from creatives and copies to budgets, new ideas, comments and much more. All this information needs to be stored somewhere and properly organised. And there are quite a few tools that can help you with this task:

1. Google Sheets: provides an experience similar to Microsoft excel while also offering the ability to share documents and allow third parties (coworkers, clients) to edit them. Despite a wide array of social media management tools that are available today, we still rely on Sheets for most of our projects.
We use the tool each month to create a sheet with a content calendar, to which we add copies, images and links that we can edit as we go along. If the need arises, we also create new sections for additional channels and mark post types. Having all the information on just one spreadsheet provides a comprehensive overview of the social media image we portray. At the same time, all the past content is just a few clicks away.

Looking for a fresh approach to social media management?

Download our free content calendar template!

2. Planoly (Instagram/Pinterest): an awesome tool for managing predominantly visual content. It enables you to preview and arrange (drag&drop) your Instagram feed to look exactly as you want it to. However, to view the whole post (including the text and #), one has to open every post separately, which can be quite time-consuming. The tool also enables scheduling posts (automatically posting content at a selected time), the ability to answer user comments and the basic analytics info. Additionally, it impresses with a wide choice of hashtags. Planoly is also an official Instagram partner.

Arranging an Instagram feed in Planoly

3. Buffer (Instagram/FB/Pinterest/Twitter/LinkedIn): while it doesn’t enable grid view, it offers a much better overview of the post content. In contrast to other tools, Buffer enables you to also include the first comment under the post, which comes in handy when you schedule posts with millions of hashtags. The tool also allows you to create stories but won’t let you schedule them in advance like the posts (you can, however, set reminders and then post stories manually). Buffer also offers advanced analytics, for example by tracking the performance of organic and paid posts separately.

An overview of scheduled posts in Buffer Publish

Entering the first comment in Buffer

4. Hootsuite is appropriate for tackling bigger projects as it enables you to manage more than 35 social media profiles at the same time. It offers excellent analytics insights and can also be used for community management (answering inbox messages) within the platform as well as post scheduling.
Price: from 25 € / month

LET’S BUST THE MYTH: scheduling posts vs. posting manually

Is everybody telling you that scheduling your posts instead of posting new content manually will hurt your online performance? Don’t listen to them. Having tested this theory extensively throughout a long period of time, we can confirm that the relevance of your content is much more important than the way it’s been posted.

Optimise your content

All the above steps won’t bring you any success if you fail to create relevant content.

Make sure to maintain a healthy balance between sales-oriented and engagement posts (approximately 80% of your posts should be engaging and 20% sales-oriented), appropriately categorize your content according to your goals and communicate your ideas clearly.

This way, you won’t only save time but also engage your followers and get algorithms to start working in your favour. And this is exactly what any successful marketing strategy needs!

If you still feel a bit lost when it comes to managing your social media channels, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ll help you with your digital strategy, making sure you’re headed in the right direction.

Neža Renko

You won’t find Neža in our offices anymore, but we know that no matter where she is now, she is doing a phenomenal job. We’ve kept a piece of them with us as a memory. :)

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A step-by-step guide for successfully managing social media profiles

Establish a (morning) routine

Work in advance

Tools for managing your posts

Optimise your content

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Neža Renko

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