5 Ways To Be Consistently Awesome

You’ve probably heard the advice time and time again that you need to be consistent online. Whether it’s being consistent across multiple sites or just posting on a consistent basis. If content is king, consistency is queen. And we all know behind every good man is a strong woman…

You can have awesome content but if no one finds it, what good is it? Consistency is a great way to ensure people will see your content. If your audience knows your blog posts go live every Tuesday at 9:00 am, they can anticipate it, and eventually they’ll start eagerly waiting for it!

Consistency applies to every aspect of your social media strategy. Your blog, your Facebook posts, your tweets, and all the other aspects. People are creatures of habit and when you tap into that predictability, you can capitalize on their attention.

But how do you achieve consistency? It’s so hard! Here are 5 tips to help make it easier for you:

1. Find a Schedule That Works for YOU

You are the one generating the content and the posts. So you need to make sure that you can maintain the schedule. Don’t let someone else tell you how much or how often you should be posting. If you can realistically only create two blogs a month, then go with that. And make each of those blog postings amazing! If you can only set aside an hour a day for social media, then plan accordingly. If you feel you should be posting more frequently than you can manage, then find someone to partner in the posting responsibility. The key is consistency. You are better off posting regularly less often than posting irregularly just to post.

2. Set Aside Time on Your Calendar

If you are restricted to how much time you have to generate new content and posts, make it part of your calendar. Set aside an hour every morning. Or maybe you can do a half hour twice a day. Whatever it is, put it on your calendar and treat it like any other meeting. Don’t double book yourself and don’t skip the meeting time. Close your door and don’t welcome distractions. Once you learn to adhere to your calendared time, you’ll be impressed with how well you generate content.

3. Use Scheduling Tools

Let’s face it, you can’t sit in front of your computer all day posting to social media sites and writing blogs. Not to mention, content should be generated, cured, and reviewed before going live. The best way to do this is to create the content in advance of when you want it to post. Then, you can use scheduling tools to determine the optimum time to post each piece. This also provides the time to formulate possible responses or follow up questions for your audience. For me, I get my highest rates of engagement on Facebook between the hours of 7 and 10 am. There’s no way I could adequately generate content that early in the morning. But thanks to scheduling, I create the posts in advance and then I’m ready to engage with my fans once the posts go live.

4. Use a Posting Calendar

Scheduling can be great but if you’re not keeping track of your upcoming posts, you could risk dumping 10 posts on your audience one day and then only 2 the next day. Use a calendar to organize yourself. It can be your Google or Outlook calendar or it can be a good old-fashioned desk blotter style calendar. Whatever your preference, make sure that you’re tracking your upcoming posts and the times you have them scheduled for. This also provides a great way to analyze your engagement – you can go back and look at which times on which days are producing the best results.

5. Track Your Ideas

This one is a vital part of my success. I keep a notepad list on my smartphone (since I literally can’t leave my phone!). Whenever a new blog idea or podcast idea or concept hits me, I can quickly jot it down on my list. This is key because I work a full time job and usually only blog on weekends, and sometimes the occasional week night. Having this list makes it easy for me to go back and choose a topic to write about. If it wasn’t for this list, it would be a lot harder to generate all the posts I create.

Bonus #6 – Advertise Your Schedule

Establishing your posting schedule allows you to advertise it as well. Tell your audience when to expect your blog posts. For my blog, I post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7:00 am PST. I can tell my followers this immediately and they know when to go check for new posts. If you’re only doing one a week or twice a month, send out teasers in advance. Let your audience know the title of the blog and remind them when it’s coming out. Creating this hype will increase their eagerness to see it go live. You can also set regular types of posts on Facebook or LinkedIn or Google+. Maybe it’s a Motivational Monday where you post an inspirational quote every Monday at 9 am. Whatever it is, letting people on other sites know about it, will help drive traffic to that site and boost your engagement.

So now you can use these ideas to help yourself get consistent. Once your audience knows what you’ll post and when, you will find that your engagement, and ideally, your conversions increase.

 

Do you have any other tips for being consistent? Please share your methods in the comments below!