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 industry-wide 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.
