Updated by Sarah Knowles on August 22, 2023

We've given you the rundown on WHY you should be scheduling your social media posts, so now, we'd like to share HOW we personally plan and schedule our social media posts at AMR Digital.

WHY WE PLAN AND SCHEDULE OUR CONTENT AHEAD OF TIME:

Sitting down and scheduling 15-30 social media posts at once can feel a bit intimidating. I mean, who has the time to actually do that? Well, the truth is, scheduling your posts can be a huge time saver because you can knock out a month of content in one sitting. It also allows you to create more consistent content and stay on-brand with your design, tone, etc.

And, you know those days when you sit down to create a post, and you just can’t think of any good ideas? We’ve all been there before. However, when you get in the habit of planning content ahead of time, it allows you to take advantage of those waves of inspiration and take a break on the days you’re just not feeling it. The result is better content and less time spent agonizing over what to post next. 

HERE IS HOW WE SCHEDULE OUR POSTS USING SPROUT SOCIAL:

There are plenty of scheduling apps out there that will do the trick, but we personally like to use  Sprout Social. Sprout Social is a social media management and intelligence tool that integrates with social media channels to allow brands and agencies to schedule content across all platforms, manage conversations, view actionable insights, and more!

Step 1: Select a primary account

We recommend picking one primary platform where your target market is most likely to be.

Step 2: Pick your images or video

The second step to scheduling is picking the image(s) or video to post. Using Sprout’s Publishing tools you can easily upload and edit your image in Compose before scheduling your post across the desired channels.

Step 3: Add copy

Next, paste in your copy – or write it directly within Sprout! Don’t forget hashtags. We like to take advantage of the Asset Library feature to predetermine hashtag groups based on clients’ content buckets. The current recommended number of hashtags for Instagram is 3-5 and they should be relevant and small/specific enough to help the right people find your content!

Step 4: Stage your post for publishing

After your content is edited and approved, you can click Send to publish it immediately, or move the post to Draft, Queue, Schedule, or Submit for Approval, here’s each option broken down, according to Sprout:

• Draft: Not sure if your post is ready to go live quite yet? Want to create multiple “backup” Instagram posts for the future? Draft is a great spot to park your unfinished content or items that still need approval.

• Queue: The Sprout Queue is ideal for edited posts ready to go live — especially if you’re not sure when to post your content. When you queue your Instagram posts, Sprout picks the best time to publish within the window you specify.

• Schedule: Use the schedule feature when you want to publish your Instagram posts at a specific time. This is great for when you’re launching an Instagram contest and want the post to go live right when it starts. It’s also helpful if you’re scheduling an Instagram post as a part of a larger campaign, and need content to go out at a specific time of the day. Plan finished content for the future and see your scheduled posts in Sprout’s Publishing Calendar.

• Submit for Approval: Choosing an approver ensures your content is properly edited, grammatically correct, timely and on-brand. Select specific approvers to review your content before it goes live.

• Send: If you don’t need approval and are ready to publish right away, click Send!

Step 5: Duplicate and optimize for each platform

Now it’s time to duplicate your posts and optimize them for other platforms! For copy, that means updating captions for character length, links or tags, call to actions, appropriate platform tone of voice, etc. For visuals, that means selecting a cover image, cropping images to fit the recommended size specifications, clipping videos to highlight different parts on different platforms, etc.

FINAL PRO TIP: Optimize your post timing to maximize engagement. Sprout gives you the ability to schedule your post based on their “best times to post on social media” data, which provides insight into what time of day the average user is active, based on your time zone and platform.

Whether you're building a business, a brand, or a personal account, regularly posting high-quality content is the key to success, and scheduling that content makes this infinitely more manageable. It also allows you to diversify your content across multiple platforms without recreating the wheel each time. Happy scheduling!

Now that you’ve got scheduling down, are you ready to learn how to start creating kick-ass monthly content batches? Check out our Guide to Monthly Content Batches!