The best thing about being a freelance worker…whether you’re trying to bring in $10k or $100K a year, is how it changes your relationship with time.
Freelancing means you decide how your time is structured, invested, and spent. It also means that you’ve got to be smart about it and that’s especially important when it comes to using social media.
As much as you’ll hear me sing praises
of the power social has in building your freelance presence, I’ll be the first to let you know you can also waste a lot of time on activities that don’t bring you much return on your investment. That’s why this week, we’re going to work on a tool that has a ton of power to help you avoid that waste.
Challenge Week 4: The Power of Schedulers
If you’ve never used a scheduler, I’m going to tell you now, that even the paid versions are
beyond worth the investment.
Social media schedulers basically provide a service that allows you to set up posts for a few days to months in advance and have them published with no work on your part. You can use them a bunch of different ways, but my favorites include…
- Setting up posts advertising that I’m a freelancer and available for work
- Sharing interesting news
stories
- Getting new attention for old blog posts
- Drumming up attention around individual services that I offer
Like I mentioned last week, I spend time engaging personally on social, but stuff like those bullet points? I really don’t want to burn my time on it, or for that matter, my emotional energy worrying about it.
You’ve got a lot of free options here, but the paid will give you more flexibility as well as the ability to sell the service to your clients. (It’s a great upsell for content marketers and web designers.)
My personal endorsement goes to Buffer (I use the cheapest paid plan), but I know plenty of people who love services like Hootsuite and Sprout (Sprout has a LOT of more advanced functions and reporting if you’re willing to pay.)
This week, look through the scheduling options and pick one to try out. Set up some posts and see how people respond (not to mention how much better you feel about your
automated social media presence.)
Megan.
P.S. If you’re looking for tips on getting even more use out of your social accounts, check out the ones at the end of this article.