Social media is a necessity to grow an online business, but can take up WAY TOO MUCH time for the busy health coach, amiright? After several years in business and trying my hand at social media posting, I have FINALLY found a way to post daily to my page(s) and group(s) WITHOUT losing my whole workday to social media browsing and distractions!
Here’s How to Schedule Social Media Posts in 10 Minutes a Day!
Something SUPER important that I want to clarify before I break this down – IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A BLOG and you are running an online coaching business, you might want to consider adding one!
Without a blog/website to be your “home base” for (a) your knowledge or for (b) your free offerings and (c) your store or services listing, you will find that your online activity will end up being a lot of “spinning your wheels.”
Everything you post online for your business should be for the purpose of moving and retaining your readers and followers into and through your business funnel and ultimately, turning them into CLIENTS AND CUSTOMERS!
NOTE: If you want to learn more about this simple 3-legged method of BLOG/WEBSITE –>> EMAIL LIST –>> SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS to use in building success in your own online business, join us in our FREE group on FB – it’s called Health Coaches on a Mission! Coach Bess breaks it all down in there on a weekly basis – we’d LOVE to welcome you there! JUST CLICK HERE to JOIN!
OK, ready for these game-changing tips?
Get a pen and paper, because I’m going to show you how to set up your daily posting schedule and template, save your posts & graphics in your content “buckets” for future re-purposing, and I’m also revealing what tool I personally LOVE to use to make scheduling all my posts possible!
Tip #1 Set up a posting SCHEDULE.
For me, that means sitting down once a week and mapping out what my posts will be about. No need to “randomly” post things to your pages and groups. Use what you are talking about on your blog and to your email list(s) to figure out what this week’s posts should be about. If you use the CONTENT CALENDAR method to plan out your blog posts, then you can SO EASILY plan your social media posts ahead of time, as well, by lining them up around the blog post topics!
Then, sit down and actually BOOK a social media scheduling day/time into your work schedule – Choose a day of the week you will schedule these posts out from – for instance, on Fridays the week before, you will schedule the next 7 days of posts.
Example: POSTING SCHEDULE
Monday through Friday – Post 4x daily on page(s) and 2x daily in Group(s) – don’t panic, you’re going to schedule these ahead of time using the tool I recommend!
Saturday – Sunday – Post 2-3x on pages, 1x in groups – keep the posts low-key, less business-like for a fun weekend vibe!
Tip #2 Set up a posting TEMPLATE.
Now you need to gather the different kinds of posts you will share to your platforms. Here is a list of ideas you can refer to as you write and create your posts to get ready to schedule them!
5 Posts to Always Include in Your Template:
1. Coaching & Tips Posts – (such as just typed or graphic memes or links to blog posts or 1 minute videos)
2. Engagement Posts – (such as Questions, asking input, asking them to share their experience or pics)
3. Videos & FB LIVE – (as well as any other LIVE interaction like Chats, etc)
4. Visuals & Graphics – (make your own branded ones on Picmonkey or Canva or share other people’s)
5. Promotional (Free Or Paid) – you can share a free promo every day or every other day – use ones that lead to an email list, as well as easy-to-grab-ones like free PDF’s & recipes. You can also share paid promos often – every other day or so – while you run them…because if you have properly layered your audience with high-quality content up until promo-time, they are more receptive to you sharing it daily, short-term.
Tip #3 Choose a Post Scheduling Tool
This right here IS THE EXACT HOW of this concept of Social Media Posting in Only 10 Minutes a Day! Save your hard-earned time (which really IS money to the small biz owner!) and CHOOSE A FREE OR LOW-COST TOOL to schedule those posts ahead of time!
Over the last few years working my business on social media, I have tried more than one tool for social media scheduling. In the last few months, though, I FOUND THE ONE.
Which one is THE ONE, you ask?
Well, Buffer is my bae (borrowing the word from my 16-year-old who would be appalled that I used it in a business post! ha!) and I’m sticking with this one. It’s EASY, it WORKS and it has a FREE level. Of course I have upgraded by now, so that I can use it for several pages and groups, and schedule more posts ahead of time (the free level limits you to only 10 posts scheduled at a time) – but it is worth every penny of my $10 a month!
Another fun discovery about Buffer is that they now have a “content calendar” portion to their offerings on any of the paid levels! (This is NOT a sponsored ad for Buffer, I am merely sharing a resource with you that I personally use and love!)
So much so, I actually created a short (free) tutorial on HOW TO USE BUFFER. You can view it HERE on our Free Training page. (No email necessary!)
If you haven’t yet begun using a scheduling tool or do not want to try it yet, remember that Facebook has a tool for pre-scheduling posts as well.
I used this feature for a long time before I discovered Buffer.
It can be a time-waster though, as it is a slower way to schedule posts and isn’t nearly as full-featured as a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite.
Tip #4 Save Your Posts & Graphics in “Content Buckets” to Re-Purpose Later
Developing the system to do this faithfully with my social media posts has been a LIFESAVER in my business! Save time, save creativity – RE-PURPOSE YOUR POSTS!
Here’s HOW:
1. Setup a Main Social Media Post folder in your online storage area (I use Dropbox for the graphics and Google Drive for the text posts and links lists!)
2. Setup sub-folders labeled for the categories you usually share about, or that blend with your brand and message (i.e. Nutrition, Stress-Relief, Spiritual Health, Fitness, etc)
3. Setup 2 folders in each sub-folder – one for graphics, one for text (store the text posts and lists of links you share on Docs) – so you would put “Nutrition Graphics” and “Nutrition Posts” inside the main sub-folder called Nutrition.
4. Every time you schedule a graphic, link, post – you add that copy or visual graphic to the appropriate “Bucket” to use down the road!
Is This a System You Can Use?
What do you think – is this system do-able for you? After the first few times you use this system, you will find that it will take no more than 10 minutes a day (or about an hour-ish per week) to schedule your social media posts – because you will be STREAMLINED, you will be setup and you will KNOW WHEN YOU SIT DOWN what to schedule posts about for your online peeps!
I would LOVE to hear from you in the comments section below or LIVE in our 24/7 FREE Group on FB, Health Coaches on a Mission – it would encourage me to know that this information HELPS YOU!
My heart is truly to see you IN ACTION, reaching those you have been CALLED TO SERVE with your business – and making a real income from your efforts! Oh…and doing it without BURNOUT!
HUGS and HUGE BELIEF IN YOU!
~ Coach Bess