One of my blogging goals for this month was to figure out a way to keep track of social shares. Specifically of how to schedule previous posts that had been published. Since I’m trying to stick to publishing posts three days a week, I wanted to share old posts on the off days. And since I’ve read sharing the same post multiple times, but at different times is smart I’m trying to do a little bit of that. Plus I have four years worth of old posts that I can schedule to help bring more traffic to my blog.
I also knew that I wanted to schedule these posts in advance, part of my overall goal to “blog smarter”. I wanted to take a few days each month to schedule out tweets and Facebook posts. I looked, and looked, but didn’t quite find anything that fit my need. I knew I wanted something that was paper and pencil. I wanted a place to write down the specific posts I was sharing. I also wanted a calendar so I could see at a glance what days I had already scheduled, and what days I need to do something. After creating a few different ideas I finally found the one that worked for me, and I wanted to share it with you! 🙂
So, here it is.
This is a digital copy of what I made. You see those watercolor dots at the top? I actually did those myself, with actual water color, then scanned them and made them digital. I’m pretty proud that I was able to do it! It took a little bit of time, but I love that it’s personal!
So, back to the sheet. Each post you want to share gets a code. I went with numbers, since that seemed the easiest. That number will get written onto the dates that you share it. The top section of the sheet gives you spaces to write the code and post title. Also in the top space is the key. This key tells you what social media channel you shared on. As you can see a green circle = twitter, and a blue triangle =Facebook.
If it seems a little confusing, keep reading, I promise it will make since.
So, the bottom part of the sheet is the calendar. This is where you will fill in when you shared each post, and on what social media channel you shared it on. Any time you share a post on twitter, you would use a green circle. The number of the post (the code that you gave it) gets written in the circle.
So, for example take a look at Friday the 12th.
As you see on the top (which means I shared it in the am) is a green circle with the number nine on it. That means I shared my Little Letter’s post on Twitter that morning. On the bottom (which means I shared it in the pm) you see a green circle with the number 1. My post on White Chicken Chili was given code 1, so that means I shared it on twitter that afternoon. You also see a blue triangle with the number 13. That means I shared my Cookie Dough Truffle post on Facebook.
Now I can see at a glance which days I am planning on sharing and which days I need to fill in. I leave M/W/F blank for Twitter and FB in the morning, since those are the times I will share my new posts. I then re-share the posts later in the month (or the next month) in the afternoon.
I guess I should also explain how I schedule these! I use tweetdeck (it’s free ‘yo) to schedule my twitter posts, and then just manually schedule my Facebook posts.
I hope that this made sense, and that the pictures helped my explanation. As I was writing this post I realized it was kind of hard to explain, which prompted me to do a youtube video, even though I hate my recorded voice, and think I look so strange while talking.
Now for the fun part! When you sign up for my mailing list, you’ll get access to my media library which includes this sheet! 🙂