It’s no secret that to compete in business today, you must be on social media.  Even if business owners aren’t posting regularly to social media channels, they at least have a profile set up on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.  

When a client comes to me, one of the first areas we dig into is their online presence and marketing.  What social channels do they have set up? How many connections do they have on each of these channels?  How often are they posting content? Is their blog active, and a source of valuable expertise for their market?  How big is their subscriber list? All of this matters.

You may have all the clients you could ever want right now, but things can change.  If you aren’t marketing on an ongoing basis, your pipeline will eventually dry up. You need to stay top of mind for your followers, so when the time comes that they do need your services, they will think of you.

The problem for many busy entrepreneurs, however, is creating the time to not only write but share content on a regular basis.  I completely understand this dilemma. I often ask myself if it’s worth my time to write my blog every week and prepare social media tips every month.  

I’ve decided it is because I can see the return on my investment.  My subscriber base is growing. The number of connections I have on social media channels continues to increase.  And the leads and business relationships I am building is on the rise as well.

Staying on top of a weekly blog and daily social media tips takes a streamlined and somewhat automated approach.  This is why I use SmarterQueue to execute my social media plan. Let me tell you how it works for me, in hopes it will spark some inspiration or motivation for you.

Step 1:  Prepare your social media editorial calendar.

To keep me organized in planning all my content, I maintain two spreadsheets.  One is for all my social media tips and the other houses all my blog content. The reason I keep them separated is because I have two different team members that schedule my content.  There is no reason, however, that you can’t keep everything in one place, with separate tabs for each area of content.

My one recommendation, when planning your content, is to post at least one time per day.  Blog weekly, if at all possible, and fill in the rest of your days with social media content: quotes, business tips, videos, social proof, infographics, articles, etc.  Plan your content ahead of time so you don’t have to think about it. In my blog spreadsheet, I plan at least 6-8 blog ideas at one time. For social media tips, I sit down in the middle of the month and plan an entire month of tips for the following month.

Step 2:  Setting Up SmarterQueue

SmarterQueue is a social media planning and scheduling tool that automates your posts.  It allows you to schedule everything and then sit back while it does all the work. There are several key areas that are important to set up in SmarterQueue to maximize this tool.

• Set up your social media profiles.  Of course, this is a no brainer.  You can’t possibly post to your social channels if you don’t connect them in SmarterQueue.  One caveat for Instagram users, SmarterQueue is not the ideal tool because it does not auto-schedule.  You have to use the SmarterQueue app on your phone to push the posts out to IG.  
• Set up your categories for the queue.  Your categories are like buckets that you use to differentiate the various types of content you have.  For instance, I have categories set for My Blogs, Other Inspiration, Self-Promotion, Articles from Other Sources, Monday Tips, Tuesday Tips…
• Connect your Bitly account.  Bitly is an app that shortens all your hyperlinks.  Having your Bitly account connected to SmarterQueue enables this tool to track your link clicks.
• Configure your posting schedule.  Instead of scheduling everything on a specific date, you can tell SmarterQueue when you want to post specific categories.  For example, you can set your “blog” category to post on Tuesdays at noon, and Fridays at 9 am. Monday Motivation can be scheduled to go out on Monday mornings at 8 am.
• Connect your blog.  This is a must if you want to be able to pull in your blog content to add to your blog queue.  Connecting your blog saves you the step of going out to your blog, copying your link and scheduling your blogs manually.  Instead, all of your blog posts reside in SmarterQueue, for you to pick and choose what you want to put in your queue.
• Set up the SmarterQueue bookmarklet.  This is a Chrome extension you can add that enables you to add content from the web to your queue with the click of a button.  If you are browsing the internet and reading your favorite articles, then sharing these with your network is easy when you have the bookmarklet.
• Set up snippets on SmarterQueue.  I love snippets because this is where I load all my hashtags, depending on the category that I am sharing.  Snippets are easy to add to the end of your post with a simple click of a button. Total time saver!

Step 3:  Load your queue with content.

This is where the magic begins.  When you start filling your buckets in the queue, you will start to create an endless supply of content to share with your audience.  Here are some of the ways I make SmarterQueue work for me.

• Set your blogs to evergreen posts.  When I load my blogs into the queue, I have the ability to set up as many text variations that I want.  In other words, the blurb you send out with your blog link can vary. This enables you to share your blog post multiple times and the social media channels still think you are posting original content.  I can set the blog to post as many times as I want. After it is shared once, it goes to the bottom of the queue, to post again sometime in the future. This ensures that people who missed it the first time will see it the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time.  And your blog queue will never run dry unless, of course, you stop writing. 
• Use SmarterQueue’s library of content.  Not all of your content needs to be original.  Remember you want to post at least once per day.  So if you don’t have time to prepare your own content, you can use all the content that SmarterQueue has for you.  The choices are endless! Grab articles from Entrepreneur. Choose images from their library. Find a funny gif to share.  Their content is organized by topic and there is a multitude of different sources you can pull from.
• Make your bookmarklet work for you.  Every morning I discipline myself to visit Pinterest and other favorite sites for business inspiration.  The sole purpose is to find content to share with my followers. My goal is to find two articles and three graphics to add to my queue.  It only takes a few minutes but it keeps the queue full of fresh content.
• My team loads the rest of my content.  It is true you can get a lot more done if you have a team or individual that helps you with your content marketing.  My team loads all my original content into SmarterQueue.  I write the content. They prepare all the graphics and schedule it in SmarterQueue.

Step 4:  Let SmarterQueue do the rest!

Now you can sit back and let the software execute your social media plan.  While you are taking care of your clients, writing your next book or online course, or hosting your live event, SmarterQueue is working for you.  It’s posting all the content you have loaded in the queue, on the days and times you told it to. How smart is that?!

Need a team to set up your SmarterQueue to execute your social media plan?  Amazing OBM can help with that.  We will help you grow your biz by co-designing and implementing your content marketing plan.  Now that sounds like a smart decision too. ;0)