When it comes to driving traffic and
building up a following on social media – especially when you’re talking about
Instagram – you absolutely MUST schedule the posts that you publish right down
to the day and minute that they go live or you could end up wasting a
tremendous amount of time, effort, and valuable content without even realizing
it.
Sure, there are some people on social media
that are able to enjoy a tremendous amount of success posting things
willy-nilly to Instagram and other platforms. But these folks are lucky, and no
successful business is built on the back of luck over the long-term.
Here are some of the biggest benefits of
creating a content calendar and scheduling your posts so that your Instagram
followers will not just actually see them but also be motivated to engage with
your content as well!
People are more active on social media at
different times
According to industrywide research, the
very best day to post new content to Instagram is a Tuesday around 4:00 PM
Eastern time, though you can usually get away with posting content on any
afternoon between Tuesday and Thursday without getting a significant dip in
your social media engagement.
The weekends seem like they would be the
best time to start posting content – after all, that’s when everyone has the
most of “free time” on their hands – but nothing could be further from the
truth. Most of these folks are out busy doing something interesting and engaging
(rather than sitting mindlessly at their desks in school or at the office),
which is why you need to really hit the timing of your posts perfectly.
Scheduled content guarantees you never miss
important dates
Another huge
advantage of scheduling your content – especially months in advance like big
businesses will – is that you never have to worry about getting caught by
surprise by major dates (like Valentine’s Day or Black Friday, for example) and
then have to cobble together a social media post and campaign that isn’t going
to be anywhere near as effective as it could have been or should have been.
As a general
rule, you’ll want to look at a calendar of all the major upcoming dates,
holidays, and industry milestones that you absolutely MUST hit and then build
content for those pieces as early as you can. Get them stored, loaded, and
ready to deploy at the right time, but get them sorted as early as possible so
that you can focus on spontaneous content published according to your posting
guidelines later. This keeps you flexible without missing out on major
opportunities.
