Hello. Today I wanna talk to you about the importance of establishing an update schedule for your social media. Now, I have already talked to you about why I believe you shouldn't choose more than three social media platforms. If you still have questions about that I'm happy to answer them. You can go back and review the other lecture about that. But particularly if you are a one person shop you don't want more than three social media platforms to deal with. And part of that ties back into the update schedule that I'm gonna suggest. I think that you should update at least, at least, twice a week. But perhaps no more than five times a week. Now, having said that. You have to look at the context of the platform that you're looking at, and also your content. Obviously if you have planned to update twice, and you've done that and then some piece of breaking news happens or some really cool something or other happens. There's so many delightful possibilities, I can't imagine. But imagine something really cool and historic happens that is relevant to the work that you do. You certainly don't want to not share it if you've already shared five things. You wanna be relevant. And so I guess what I'm saying is use your common sense. Okay? But a good basic guideline is no less than twice a week. Right? Because the worst thing that can happen, well not the worst, but one of the worst things that can happen in a branding marketing situation. Is that someone who's just heard of you Googles you and gets your Twitter feed page, or your Facebook page, and the content is a month old, or two months old. That's not great because it makes you look like you're not even invested in your own brand. And if you aren't invested in your own brand, how can they expect that you will be invested in the work that they're giving you to do? Does that make sense? Okay. So, at least twice a week. All right? And I know one of the reasons that I recommend setting an update schedule, and by that I mean blocking off time on your calendar to work on things. It is so easy to get caught up with work. The actual work that you do, not the branding and the marketing that you do with your brand, but the actual work that you do and family commitments or your hobbies or your volunteer work. Life can get super busy, and before you know it, you do look around and it's been a few weeks. And that's not what you want to do, and I handle social media for three organizations in addition to my own personal stuff. And I have found the only way I can do that is I block off three times a week, one time per week for each organization, to update and look for content. And some of it I automate, and I talk about that in another lecture. So, definite, definite benefit to that, having that time scheduled, is that it's easy to slip into that head space. You immediately are just kind of like, oh this is what I do on Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock, is I sit down and I find content and I update my social media. Great way to do it. Now you wanna be careful. The reason I say no more than five times a week is because you run the risk of spamming people. And if you spam people, unless they are just super heavily invested in your brand, they're gonna unfollow you. Because it can just be too much. I've actually unfollowed people because they do social media too well, in my opinion. It's just a constant, I find all my feeds are dominated by them. I needed some space, okay! It wasn't them, it was me. It was actually really them. Anyway, one more thing to consider when you're thinking about your update schedule, remember, update schedule, Is the 80/20 rule. And the 80/20 rule states, I'm not making up the 80/20 rule but I'm kind of making up the word by word of it. 80% of what you put out on social media should be content that is of interest to the people who follow you. 20% should be self-promotion. Okay? 80% content of interest to your followers, 20% self-promotion. Please, please, please, please do not flip those two things. I have actually un-followed some really brilliant people who are doing some really cool work because they had flipped it. And 80% of the time it's like, oh, I just published this article and I just got interviewed here, and look, I'm featured on this. And that's great, I wanna know. I'm very happy for them, and I like to know what they're up to. But that was the dominant thing for them. And what I'm really more interested in is, what are they reading? What's going on in their head? What things are inspiring them? Because you may be surprised, but people are going to be interested in that in your brand. And they're gonna wanna know what's interesting to you that might be interesting to them. So 80/20 rule. All right. So to review, establishing an update schedule helps in a variety of ways. It helps you keep your content fresh. It makes it easier for you to find stuff, because you get in the habit of knowing that's what you're gonna do, at that time. It ensures that you don't lose track of time and suddenly have nothing posted for a while. And the 80 20 rule. 80% of the time post stuff of interest to the people that follow you. 20% of the time promote yourself. If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out. If you have experience, if you can relate to unfollowing people because they're doing it too well, they're just posting all the time or if they have flipped the 80/20 rule. Always interested in your stories. The community can always benefit from hearing them. So get in touch. I hope this was helpful.
