Social Media Scheduling - How Far Ahead Should You Schedule Your Posts

Every modern brand knows the importance of high-quality social media content to its identity. Almost 75% of Americans use social media sites, including following and engaging with their favorite brands.

One secret that many of the most successful social media profiles may not share with you is that they likely use social media scheduling to deliver their content. While a perfect social media feed looks effortless, it often requires hours of preparation.

Almost every brand could benefit from scheduling posts for social media well in advance. But first, it's important to understand the different types of content and how you should schedule them.

What are the Different Types of Content?

From recipes and tutorials to business advice and social commentary, the types of posts that you can create is limited only by your imagination.

No matter how specific or kitschy a post may seem, though, it will fit into one of these two categories.

• Evergreen content 💚
• Time-sensitive content ⏰

Evergreen content always stays fresh for readers, hence the name. This content will stay relevant regardless of the time of year or current trends. Viewers of evergreen content will remain consistent or even grow over time. Examples of evergreen content include recipes, how-to guides, FAQs, the history of a certain topic or concept, glossaries, or checklists.

Time-sensitive content is the opposite of evergreen content. Anything time-sensitive will see an initial peak of interest followed by a massive decline. Viewers will no longer care about this content as time passes. Examples of time-sensitive content include election results, sports scores, promotional offers, seasonal blogs, and news stories.

Which Content is Best for Social Media Scheduling?

You can write out and schedule both evergreen content and most time-sensitive content.

All evergreen content can be written and scheduled in advance, even up to a few months. A tutorial or helpful checklist will be relevant even if you decide to post it in 90 days. In theory, your brand could schedule evergreen content as far a year in advance, if you have enough available.

Most time-sensitive content can also be scheduled. For instance, if you're a company planning the launch of a new product, you can still design and write posts for the product well ahead of time. If you need to go a new direction after the product is released, it will be much easier to edit existing copy than to come up with all new content.

The same goes for seasonal posts. While the content may only be relevant for a few weeks, you can still create it far in advance. Holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries can all be uploaded to the scheduling platform well before their actual dates.

💡TIP: When creating/editing your posts, select a label from a drop-down menu, and assign it to your post. Labels are a powerful tool to help you get valuable insights about published posts. For instance, to later analyze which type of posts performed the best in the Analytics App.

*labels can be customized according to your needs in Settings

The only content that cannot be scheduled in advance is that which is based on real-time events, like breaking news or current events.

Even so, you can work with a scheduler to plan accordingly. If your brand posts five times a week, you can dedicate one of those days to news updates and block a few hours that day to curate a news post. Your graphic designers to develop a template that can be easily updated for news updates. On your calendar, mark off with an idea post which days will be for news update posts.

The Idea post in ZoomSphere allows you to quickly write down your posts concepts in a couple of clicks, and later you can turn this Idea post into a standard post.

How Far in Advance Should You Schedule Social Media Posts?

In general, a few weeks to a month in advance is the best timeframe for scheduling your evergreen and (most) time-sensitive posts. It's enough of a buffer to perfect every post but not so far ahead that you can't make changes as needed. Keep in mind that time-sensitive posts still may need updates.

However, there no hard and fast rule exists for how far out you should be scheduling posts. If you work alone, you create every post on your schedule. If you work with a content team, it will be best to set a meeting with its members. You'll want to understand their workload and productivity levels to find your perfect timeline. 

Before you begin writing and designing posts, outline your content ideas and review them with your team.

How many posts will you require from each graphic designer? What about your photographer? Some members of your team may only be able to create posts 10 days in advance, while others will have no problem adhering to a schedule that extends a month away.

What are the Benefits of Social Media Scheduling?

Scheduling posts will help you manage the workload of maintaining a high-performing social media strategy. After investing in a social media scheduling platform, you'll notice improved collaboration, consistency, and efficiency.

Collaboration

Every social media manager is familiar with the struggle of scrambling to find a high-quality picture or well-designed graphic for a post that needs to be uploaded in the next hour.

When posts are scheduled in advance, most of the guesswork gets taken out of the equation. Scheduling platforms allow multiple users to access a calendar and view their tasks.

💡TIP: When creating or editing a post, you can leave comments to your teammates/clients or even mention which triggers an email notification.

Team members can view what they need to work on in real-time so they can plan their schedules accordingly and work with the rest of the team to ensure all deliverables are met.

So, even if you don't have posts written for the next two weeks, your graphic designers can look ahead and see what needs to be done on their end. If a content writer goes on vacation for a week, all of his work can be completed beforehand. If you have to change an assignment at the last minute, you will be able to communicate the change to every team member at the same time thanks to different Statuses in the Scheduler App, which are showing you different phases of the post for transparent organisation of your team's work. 

Consistency Across Social Media Platforms

While the information you post should educate, entertain, and even surprise readers, your posting timelines should never leave them guessing. With a social media scheduling tool, your content automatically will upload to the social media platforms of your choice at the time of your choice.

No more will you have to concern yourself with perfecting and uploading social media posts to three different apps multiple times a week. Your content will reach followers consistently, even across 10-hour time zone differences. You'll also be able to post outside of business hours, even during the middle of a Saturday when you're on the beach. 🏖️👙

The Scheduler App will  also group posts on the same day across different social media platforms. This can prove helpful if you're looking to discuss the same topic with slightly varied messages.

For instance, if you are looking to announce the release of a product on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, a scheduling platform will conveniently display all three posts in the same place for you to compare how each post would appear to a user. Maybe you'll notice that you want to switch the text of the Facebook and Instagram posts or even re-write the Twitter one.

Efficient Use of Time

Creating social media content is more than just writing a clever caption or referring to a trend. Each post needs clear and grammatically correct wording, attractive visuals, and an overarching message that connects to your brand.

Posts also need to vary from one another in what is known as a content mix. Followers won't want to see five promotional posts in a row followed by one misplaced infographic, so you'll need to upload content strategically.

All of this takes a lot of time.

If you're writing and uploading posts as you go, you'll need to constantly refer back to previous posts to see what you should post next. You may post something that doesn't look great on your feed. This would either ruin the aesthetic you took months to create or create embarrassment if you decide to take it down. That's why we are providing you with an in-app Instagram feed preview option.

Setting aside a few hours every day to write and schedule posts will eliminate most, if not all, of the problems you face when you're posting on a time crunch. And after you establish a routine, you'll likely see an improved ability generate much more content within these few hours. Since it takes almost 30 minutes to become focused, a few hours of content creation biweekly will go farther than 30 minutes a day.

Schedule Like a Pro

Scheduling posts in advance is just one benefit of utilizing a social media management service. At Zoomsphere, we offer analytics tools, web monitoring, and a leads manager, along with our scheduling platform.

Connect with our team of digital experts today to see how your brand can benefit from all of our services, including social media scheduling. Happy Scheduling!