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Bonus! Social media scheduling guide

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Social media Scheduling Guide

About This Guide

Social media is critically important in today’s business and consumer environment. One of the most important success factors is showing up with consistent content, but when you’re a small business owner with many hats that can feel overwhelming and impossible. By batch scheduling your content monthly it IS achievable and will drive better results. This guide walks you through our favorite social media scheduling tool, Later. This guide ensures you’ll leverage the tool to maximize results and efficiency.

Quick Start Guide

Page 2-3

Feature Deep Dive

Pages 4-6

Overview of key features you have access to in Later

Platform Deep Dive

Pages 7-8

SM platform specific benefits, limitations & workarounds

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Jump right in and get started quickly!

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Mobile App

Page 9

App user guide with step-by-step instructions



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Quick Guide To Getting Started

1. Login to Later on your computer at https://app.later.com/ using your Instagram login credentials

2. Click the “Calendar View” tab on the left – this is the default tab and the one you’ll use most

1. Add Media

Drag and drop photos that you would like to use for future social media posts into the media column.

• You can also upload photos directly from your phone’s camera roll into your media in the Later mobile app – simply click the media icon at the bottom of the app, then click the “add new media” button. This is GREAT for when you’re at events or on the go and snap pictures that you think are social media worthy.

• You can also link a Google Photos or Dropbox account to Later if you store your photos in either of those cloud services. You can see the icons at the top of the media column in the desktop version of Later.

2. Select Social Platforms & A Photo To Post

• Select the social media platforms that you want to schedule a post for at the top of the calendar.

o Clicking the icon will select that icon only and show you the calendar for just that platform.

o Clicking the + at the top right of each icon will select that platform in addition to any other platforms already selected and show you all of the platforms together on the calendar.

• Select a photo from the media column and drag and drop it to the date and time you’d like to schedule for that post and a new window will open.

o First, set the common caption and crop that you would like to be consistent across all social platforms that you are using this photo for as a post.

o Hit Next. Now you can edit each individual post before scheduling. The next page outlines our recommended platform by platform customizations...

Later works with Pinterest as well…



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3. Make Platform-Specific Edits

Instagram • Crop the photo to square (optional – can also do it in IG).

o Add up to 30 relevant hashtags with space between the hashtags and the caption. See your Hashtag Bonus for hashtag best practices.

• If you are including a link to anything keep in mind that links are not clickable in IG

captions. Best to say “Link in Bio. (bit.ly/link)” and then put the full link in the bio. • If you want to make sure you don’t forget to tag other IG accounts I often write “TAG @xyz,

@ghh, @etc” right below the caption and before the leading dots. Then delete them after tagging and before posting when you get your reminder.

Facebook

• Try to engage your community with a call to action or question or request to share/like

• Remove all hashtags (unless they’re just for cutesy-

fun) since they’re not really used on Facebook

• Crop photo as you see fit, if needed

Twitter

• Shorten to the appropriate # of characters. You will

see a counter in the bottom right of the tweet screen so you know how far over/under you are.

• Add hashtags so people find your tweet

• Crop photo as you see fit, if needed

4. Schedule to Post

• Adjust your schedule date/time at the bottom, if needed, and then hit “Create Posts” • If you don’t want all 3 posts to go out at the exact same time that day, drag and drop the

individual posts on the calendar. So, drag one up to 9:30am, leave one at 10:30am and move the other to 2pm maybe...based on what you’ve found to be the optional posting times per platform for your business.

Voilà! You’ve scheduled your first posts!



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Feature Specific Deep Dive

Media Library Our best practice is to upload any and all photos in real-time (from your phone or computer) that we think we might want to use for social media in the future. This is more effective than having to go find and search for photos at the beginning of each month when you are ready to schedule. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious and the photo you’re uploading inspires a caption idea you can even write the caption in the “note” (desktop only) of the media. Then when you use that photo for a post later the note will automatically appear in the caption so you’re already a step ahead! Here’s an overview of specific features in the media library:

There are two views you can toggle between at the top right. I prefer the grid view, but the list view allows you to see details of each photo such as the filename, any labels or notes, how many times it has been used and the upload date. You can also sort by some columns.

Filters

• Media notes – as mentioned, using notes either for caption ideas or reminders can be helpful, but is not critical. You can search media notes though...so keep that in mind. Especially as your library starts to get large.

• Media Usage - I always default my filter to “unused photos” so I’m only seeing photos I haven’t already used and are available to use for future posts.

• Time Uploaded – this is a helpful filter if you’re

looking for a photo around a certain date, but usually it should be left alone at “all time” default.

• Labels – this lets you create labels for your

photos to help you better organize them and find photos faster. I don’t recommend using labels, since it’s an extra step every time you upload a photo, UNLESS:

o You have a really large library of media that’s hard to keep straight

o You’re scheduling your content out according to categories or topics (so Thursday is a cocktail, Saturday is a behind the scenes photo, Monday is a distillery photo, etc...).

• Star – if you have multiple people in your account scheduling and you want to highlight certain photos for them to make sure they use or something to that effect this could be helpful, but I don’t find that clients use it very often

• Move – on paid plans you can have multiple groups of accounts. Each group has it’s own media library, calendar and social profiles with different user access to each group. For most craft producers multiple groups are not necessary and therefore this media move functionality is not relevant.



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Calendar

The calendar is pretty self-explanatory, but a few details to note:

• On the Free Plan you only get to schedule the following number of posts each month...I find it’s enough for most clients. You can see how many posts you have left that month in the top right corner

o 30 IG posts (feed + story combined) o 30 FB posts o 50 Tweets

• On the free plan you can also only go back in history 2 weeks, but I find this isn’t usually a big need or problem since this is all about scheduling into the future.

• Bulk Scheduling Posts – you’ll likely see some prompts in the tool about creating “quick schedule timeslots” by double clicking on the timeslot you prefer. While this sounds helpful, you can only do it one platform at a time and then have to go click on each one to write the caption, edit, etc... so I don’t recommend using this feature.

Analytics

For free plans the analytics are pretty basic, and even on paid plans the analytics are for Instagram only. If you’re just getting started with analytics this is certainly better than no information, and can start to help you assess what’s working and what isn’t. Happy to provide analytics guidance if you decide you need it.

Post by post performance for a specified time period



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Settings

The standard settings area where you can change account details, membership levels, add/delete profiles, etc...

Paid Features While the free version works perfectly well for most craft makers, especially early on, Later does offer several tiers of paid plans that include extra benefits. These benefits can be hugely helpful as your social media program grows. Especially if you have multiple people working on social media. Here are some of the key benefits:

Higher Post Maximums Per Month Great if 30 IG, FB, Pinterest and 50 Twitter posts per month aren’t cutting it (congrats on posting so regularly!!) Additional User Profiles It’s risky to give multiple users your Later login information so if you have multiple people curating content and scheduling posts this is the feature you need. Ability to Schedule Formats Beyond Single Photos While the free version only allows you to schedule single photos the paid versions allow for scheduling of IG stories, videos and multiple photo posts. Tag Locations & Users The ability to tag locations and users on your scheduled posts is great, but be aware that this only works on Instagram, only if you auto schedule it (vs. manual notification) and only if you have a Business IG account. So it’s use is a bit limited. Hashtag Suggestions For Instagram only, if you type a hashtag into Later it will provide a list of related hashtags. Refer to your Hashtag bonus for best practices here, because you’ll still need to pop over to Instagram to check the hashtag counts before deciding which to use. Increased Analytics Capabilities & Reporting The analytics (IG only) on the free version are honestly pretty good but you get higher level analytics, the ability to export and Pinterest analytics on paid versions. Conversations Lets you manage comments from within the tool. I manage comments natively in each platform.

Linkin.bio With this you can Build a clickable, shoppable Instagram feed to drive more traffic, revenue, and sign-ups from your Instagram account. Limited use given alcohol online sales regulations, but if you can sell this can help you monetize Instagram. Additional Features Such as the ability to get Later customer service via chat (instead of email only) and the ability to share your schedule calendar and create user groups.



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Platform Specific Deep Dive

The Later scheduling tool works well for Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. But it was originally an Instagram only tool...and you’ll notice some bias towards better features for Instagram currently. That being said, I know they’re working on improving features for the other platforms as well. While no tool is perfect for every need, I have called out the key benefits to use and the key limitations to be aware of (and associated workarounds) for each platform below.

Across All

Key Features We Love • Free plan is excellent...while some of the paid features are nice, Later does a good job of

providing all critical features to everyone. • Ability to piggy-back off of posts I’m already creating and just edit slightly for other platforms

in less than a minute • Emoji keyboard is supported so you can put emojis in all of your captions

Facebook

Limitations • Doesn’t preview content if you add a link to your post

o Workaround – whenever I am posting a new article or link I schedule this natively in Facebook because I think the content preview is important to get higher click-through engagement

• Doesn’t auto-lookup or link to other Facebook Pages if you want to @mention someone else in your post

o Workaround – when I notice in my Instagram post I’m publishing (manually) that I mentioned another brand/person, I simply pop over to Facebook and edit the auto-scheduled and published post to add in the @mention so it notifies them and is clickable.

Twitter

Key Features We Love

• Character counter so you can edit your caption easily.

Limitations • No hashtag lookup or counting

o Workaround – have to go research hashtags in Twitter • Doesn’t auto-lookup or link to other Twitter accounts if you want to @mention someone

else in your post o Workaround – if this is important you have to post in Twitter natively since you can’t go

back and edit tweets like you can in Facebook.



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Instagram

Key Features We Love

Photo cropping directly in Later

Hashtag lookup & total count while typing in Later

Ability to save commonly used hashtag lists to apply to posts easily

App notification to publish – it’s timely, reminds you twice on your phone and then via email so it’s almost impossible to miss all day

Limitations of Later

Ability to fully auto-publish* if you have a business account (which I actually don’t recommend until you get to 10k followers) on Instagram

• They used to have this amazing feature that would show you hashtag counts as you typed

them in, unfortunately IG updated their rules so they could no longer do that but I’m hopeful it will come back sometime in the future.

Notifications vs. Auto Publish for Instagram

While many complain, I actually prefer the manual publish for a few reasons, so even with a business account I don’t use auto-publish most of the time:

• It lets me put reminders of who to Tag in my caption so I don’t forget (then just delete when posting)

• It lets me review and edit every single post BEFORE it goes live – this is critical when you have other people posting on your behalf.

• This review often acts as a reminder to either fix the same thng in the FB post or even just as a reminder that something is posting today so I make sure to keep an eye out for comments/engagement in real time. Without this I feel scheduling social becomes too “set it and forget it.”

• It allows me to use the IG filters…otherwise I’d have to perfectly filter before uploading photos to Later.

Source: www.docs.later.com



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Later Mobile App Guide

• Make sure notifications are turned on for this app. • When the time has come for a scheduled photo to be posted to Instagram you will get a

notification on your phone. o If you do not take action you’ll get a 2nd notification 15 minutes later. If you do not take action you will then get an email

• Once you receive the notification, click it or open the app. The post that needs to be posted will appear at the top highlighted in a bright blue box. If you don’t see it - make sure you’re in the “Schedule” tab – highlighted in blue at the bottom of the first image below) Then follow along the steps shown in the subsequent images below:

1. Click “Post Now”

2. Click “Open in 3. Click “Copy to Instagram” 4. Choose “Story” or “Feed”

Instagram”

5. Crop Photo As Needed 6. Filter & Edit As Needed 7. Paste Caption & Post*

*Before Posting: • Reread & edit caption • Remove any “TAG” reminder note • Tag people & locations After Posting (optional): • Go into a few of your top hashtags

used in the post and like/comment on most recent to increase visibility

Note: Great to preview what your feed will look like based on your upcoming scheduled posts!



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Voilá! You’re Ready to Be A Social Media Scheduling Ninja!

One last word on why scheduling is so important...

Primarily, it’s simply because you are TOO BUSY and TOO IMPORTANT to your business to not batch your work and schedule. Having consistent social media content is critical...but thinking and worrying about it consistently is wasteful. Now that you have the tools, tips and tricks to be the scheduling ninja I know you are, block a day (3-4 hours) at the end of every month to sit down and schedule the entire upcoming month. You can, of course, also post on the fly in addition to your scheduled content...with social more is definitely better as long as it’s consistent quality and on theme. But at least, if most of your content is scheduled, there’s no pressure to HAVE to figure out what to post on the fly. But even with your posts masterfully scheduled, you can’t completely forget about social media. It’s crucial that you continue to respond to your consumers’ comments in a timely manner and regularly engage with other people’s content. Live videos and stories are great to be active in social authentically. Spreading yourself too thin is a recipe for failure so while it’s important that you understand all of these tools and platforms, it’s even more important for you to decide which are best for your business. And if you ever need help with that, or anything else you know where to find me!

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Social media Scheduling Guide · Craft Alcohol Marketing Bootcamp courses.thecraftycask.com Course...

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