Scheduling your Social Media? (Part 1)

First off, there is a big difference between Scheduling and Automating your Social Media updates.

I’m going to spend a few days exploring this subject, feel free to chime in.

In 2003 and 2004 I started and stopped a couple of blogs.  It wasn’t a priority for me and the software platform I was using didn’t offer the ability to write something and publish it at a future date.

Then a few years later, I decided I was going to take this more seriously and writing blog posts became as regular as brushing my teeth.

I have all my teeth.

And yet I don’t brush them at the exact same time every day.

When I went from 2 to 3 to 4 separate blogs, I needed a plan.  So I created one. Between the 4 blogs I was doing 46 updates a week, and this was a sideline, not my full time profession.  On Collective Wisdom I had updates at 6am, noon, and 6pm.  On the Really? blog I updated at 6am and 4pm.  This was 7 days a week.  Another blog was updated weekly, and the 4th was updated 5 days a week.

Maybe if this was my only job, and I had no family to consider and never wanted to take time off, this could have been done without scheduling.

But I scheduled.  I would write a few blog posts in one sitting.  I would write when I had the time for future dates.  And I always had to write at least one of those updates in the morning for that evening, due to the nature of the subject.

But wait,  these are blog posts, they aren’t social media, some of you say.

Wrong.

These blog posts were a way to spread the word about ______________ and I always left the door open to comments and conversations.

Now that I’m using WordPress instead of Blogger and I’ve changed my habits with this website to a 5/5/5 plan (see more info in the footer of this website), I always schedule ahead of time.

Do you schedule?  Why or Why not?

Tomorrow, I’ll dig deeper into this subject and the topic will focus on Twitter.