I was in a McDonald’s one day when I saw the cleaning checklist on the back of the bathroom door. I thought, if the guy cleaning the bathroom needs a checklist to make sure he doesn’t forget to sweep or wipe down the sink, we definitely need a social media update checklist to make sure we don’t forget to post everywhere for ourselves and the companies we work with.
Posting daily content on a regular basis for your brand, business or startup is challenging, and making sure you post to all of your social media channels every day can be even more challenging. It seems so simple. Write a blog post, make a video, find something worth sharing, write an update on each channel and post it. But other things can get in the way while you’re in between Facebook, Instagram and YouTube that can knock you off course and you may end your day having only made a couple of updates rather than maximizing the reach of your content by posting everywhere you can.
There are plenty of schedulers and social media management tools like HootSuite, SproutSocial and Buffer, but we wanted something that made sure everything was completed each day.
So we made a Social Media Posting Checklist! OK, it’s actually just a really simple chart we use that includes:
- Each social media outlet you post to
- The posting method for each – manually vs using a social media management tool
- The channel URL or social media management tool URL for each channel
- Your login information for each channel
- The update you’re going to post
- What time you should be posting
- A column for placing an “X” when you’ve updated
You can make one in five minutes in Word, Excel, Pages, Google, paper and pencil, a napkin or whatever. The idea is just that you have some kind of a standardized checklist that you use each day for each and every bit of content you’re sharing.
Many of you may be using social media management tools to facilitate sharing, but I’m pretty sure none of them post to every social media channel, so you’re likely jumping back and forth between that and manual updates, or using multiple tools to get the job done.
With a checklist, you can post a few updates, do other work, get as distracted as you want and come back later, as long as you’ve checked all the boxes each day.
