Map Out Your Efforts To Save Animals On Social
If you want to take your social media game seriously, you need to get organized. You wouldn’t walk onto a football pitch without a gameplan, right? The social media landscape is the pitch and you need to win big for animals.
Chart out a plan to keep your message on point and consistent. Think about the niches that you fall into -- vegan eating, health, animal advocacy, etc. How are you going to best get those thoughts and philosophies out to the world using social media? I’ve talked at length about this earlier, so once you’ve chosen what will be common themes between your posts, put together a plan of attack.
Beyond just the common themes of your posts, you’ll also want to consider post frequency, timing, and execution.
If you’re running a Page, post frequently. This will give you more opportunities for posts to go viral and an overall bigger reach. Of course, you don’t want to overdo it. I recommend once daily to Facebook (until you’re regularly getting good engagement, then up it), 2-4 times daily to Instagram (including at least one story daily), and as much as you can (even up to 10-20 times daily) on Twitter since the Twitterfeed is so fluid. If you’re only maintaining personal accounts, you’ll want to post less often. On Facebook, shoot for 2-4 times per week maximum, on Instagram don’t post more than once per day, and on Twitter, 1-5 times per day will suffice. Less is more, and this is certainly true for your personal presence on social media.
Learn when your audience is most active during the day. Find the peak, and post just before that peak. Analytics with this info are available for FB Pages and Instagram business accounts. If this info isn’t available to you, simply just pay attention to which of your posts tend to get more traction and see what you can glean from that in terms of timing of your posts. A good rule of thumb is the 9:00 am to 9:00 pm rule. Posting after 9:00 am (in the time zone where the majority of your followers are) ensures the vast majority will be awake, and posting before 9:00 pm will ensure the majority of your followers are not yet off social media for the day.
Execution of your posting may seem overwhelming. Keeping up with it on a regular basis can become a part-time job. That’s why I highly encourage you to schedule posts in advance. This is possible only for FB Pages and Instagram business accounts, but is also available for any Twitter account. Scheduling 1-2 weeks in advance is ideal. This is beneficial because it allows you to get all of your creative juices flowing at once, won’t make each day feel overwhelming and full of pressure to post good content, and also allows you to get a better overall picture of the flow and consistency of the content you’re putting out there.
John Oberg
John Oberg is a social media pro, dedicated to making the world a kinder place for animals by utilizing the power of social media. He recently launched his own independent project for animals through Patreon. Prior to that, he served as Director of New Media for the international animal protection organization, The Humane League. And prior to that, John served as Director of Communications for Vegan Outreach. In both of these roles, John oversaw social media for the organizations which led to a tenfold increase in following in both, as well as over 1 billion views of content posted to these pages.
