Social media has become an integral part of everyone’s lives. It has an audience for just about any startup business.

But how to reach that audience in a most efficient way?

Entrepreneurs realize the importance of a presence on social platforms if they want to join their customers, but they do not want to get involved personally. But, to stand out and position themselves as leaders in their industries, they also have to rely on content quality.  However, many do not know where to start.

And they realize that they will mostly rebuild their reputation from the bottom, and build their network of influence across social networks before resuming their market share.

Also, when they see the amount of work it will take as well as the ways they will have to change how they operate, it seems like an uphill climb of a mountain. I can’t blame them. They have not chosen this path to write memoirs or become editors of web magazines, but rather, for doing business.

Often, it is not just a matter of budget and resources that set someone back, but also the lack of skills and understanding of this ecosystem.

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Develop a rational and pragmatic action plan

Several tools help plan and organize the process of creation, curation and publication of content on different platforms. At first, there must be a precise and detailed action plan with the company (or professional):

• Revise the current contents of any archives, and determine which can be enriched with new audio and video technology.
• Develop a list of potential new content to create via activities of the company (or professional).
• Recruit and train responsibly for content creation and management of community. Hire the right consultants needed to complete the team (or staff).
• Select tools and curation of the most appropriate publications, depending on the specific campaign objectives.
• Determine a schedule of production and deliverables reasonably based on available resources.

Tools for content curation, such as Drumup, Buzzsumo and Scoop.it, among others, allow users to find and archive the best content broadcasted among social networks according to the themes and keywords. 

Other applications such as Agorapulse, HootSuite, IFTTT, Triberr, Zapier, and Buffer may be used to effectively plan and organize a publication schedule. Other applications can later analyze and measure the results of marketing campaigns’ influence in social media.

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My toolbox

Personally, I use Agorapulse to establish my publication schedule on the four major social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X/Twitter. More than half a million professionals worldwide use these channels. A combination of applications that fit my current needs as a freelance consultant allows me to dedicate the rest of my time to other professional activities.

Early in the morning, I select the best content from my subscriptions (which I keep very few and focused). 

My selections are relayed directly to Agorapulse, which adds to the publication schedule of each of my social platforms, as determined in advance. Thus, any content I selected is scheduled to be released at different times, even on different days. That only takes me a few hours a week, mostly during the breakfast period which is most convenient for my personal schedule.

That allows me to continually offer the best content at different times of the day (according to my audience which is in different time zones). With these applications, I can program my content while respecting the rule of 5-3-2 on each network. 

This is an unwritten rule of bloggers which means that of all sent posts on social networks, half must come from external sources. And of the other five internal sources, three must be non-commercial in nature, and the other two oriented to humanize the relationship with customers.

Choosing the most effective platform may take some time. It is very specific to each business and strategy. Here’s a generic cheatsheet to help you with your process:

Make sure to consolidate and interlink your efforts to gradually grow your network everywhere. Set up your social media bios to link to your other channels. 

Where it is not possible, set up landing pages that consolidate your social media content from many platforms. Linktree is one of the more popular tools to do that.

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Schedule for a week ahead

Finding the best time to post on social media networks may take some time. Here’s what I found when sharing my content (note: your experience may be different, but this is a good start!)

• Monday (Blog / Twitter): The preferred day for marketing content. This is the perfect day, first thing in the week to post a blog, or any other personal content. Twitter proves to have the best return for shared content.
• Tuesday (LinkedIn): This is the day for B2B social media marketing. For professionals concerned with the immediate success of their presence in social networks, LinkedIn reveals the best platform on Tuesday. In many studies, Tuesday also proved to be the best day to send out your newsletter, so if you are into email marketing, schedule it for Tuesday!
• Wednesday (Facebook / Blog): For bloggers, Wednesday proves the best day of the week for B2C marketing. To reach a large audience, Facebook is still proving to be the most effective platform, despite all the criticism. And Wednesday is also a very good time to publish a blog.
• Thursday (LinkedIn):Thursday is the day Trends / New Technology is highlighted and thus is another successful day for professionals. This is when tech bloggers emerge, revealing recent discoveries or commenting on the news of the week.
• Friday (Twitter / Blog): Friday is the journal day of the week. This is another good day to publish a blog and respond to conversations undertaken during the week. This is the perfect day for Twitter and micro-blogs.

Diversify your time slots when you schedule your content to, especially if your target audience is global, and hence located in different time zones.

If you don’t have time to create a schedule of curated content, consider posting news. Sharing newsworthy content on a regular basis is a great way to become a reliable resource in a niche.