Social Media Posting Schedule

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Social Media Manual

Social Media Posting Schedule

Schedule Overview

We have different posting schedules and strategies for Twitter and Facebook aimed at delivering the right amount of content for each platform at the most effective times.

We post content every day of the week, including weekends. The weekend is actually the highest activity time for our social media platforms, so it is very important to have a full content schedule ready to go before the weekend for both Facebook and Twitter if you don’t want to have to be posting during off-hours. Even then, it is still a good idea to monitor post and advertisement performance to be able to adjust ad spends and posting schedules based on performance, current events, or new articles that arrive over the weekend.

Historically, Saturday and Sunday have been our most active days on social media while Wednesday has been our least active day. As a result, weekends are a good time to post the more ‘fun’ content that we have, as they will tend to perform even better then than they would during the week. We’ve also found it most effective to spend a larger portion of our advertising budget on weekends.

Facebook Schedule

For Facebook, we usually post three times a day at 9am, 12pm-1pm, and 12am (for content aimed at Asia, usually focusing on China) every day. We also use 4am when we have Europe- or India-specific content or 4pm for U.S.-specific content. Generally you should try to avoid hitting all of those slots on the same day, as posting too many times will lead to more negative feedback and lower engagement on a per-post basis.

The different post times are aimed at different segments of our audience.For example the U.S. audience can be reached mainly at 9am, 12pm, and 4pm, and our Asian audience can be reached at 12am, 4am, and 9am. Our European audience is more likely to be reached at 4am, 9am, and 12pm (all times listed here are Eastern Time, obviously).

As a rule of thumb, you don’t want to be posting more than one post every 3-4 hours, and you don’t want to post any more than 4 posts in a day, with the usual amount being 3. Generally we always post at 9am and 12pm, as those are the times that hit the most people, and do one nighttime post to hit a different audience.

You can schedule each of these posts in advance using Facebook’s scheduling feature (click the little clock on the lower left hand of the text box for posting), so you don’t need to be awake at absurd hours to make this happen.

After you schedule a Facebook post, make sure to check the “Activity Log” (available under the “edit page” dropdown menu at the top of the page Admin Panel) to make sure the post looks correct and that there aren’t any typos.

When you’re in the activity log, if you’re posting a photo, you can edit the text by clicking on the photo to open it and then clicking the “edit” button. But (unfortunately) if you are posting a link or video (e.g., from YouTube), if there is a mistake in the text you will have to delete the post and recreate it and reschedule it with the mistake fixed.

Twitter Schedule

We use Hootsuite ( to manage Twitter. Our Twitter scheduling is a little more forgiving than Facebook, as you can post much more often without annoying your followers. Generally whenever we post an article on Facebook we will also post it on Twitter at the same time. However, we also try to include other newsworthy items (e.g., important daily economic news from the FT or interesting tweets or economics papers from grantees/advisory board) that we don’t post on Facebook.

Good for Twitter, but not Facebook:

Creating a Facebook Post

On Facebook there are usually three parts of each post: the photo, the text, and the link. For all of the non-video content we post, we usually post it as a photo with text and a link rather than posting a link.

For Facebook the photo is by far the most important part of the post – Facebook is a very visual medium due to how the Newsfeed works and how different types of content are displayed there. This makes it very different from Twitter in terms of what works and why. You can post the exact same text and link with two different photos and get a vastly different response on Facebook depending on which photo generates a better response. So finding the right photo to draw attention to the post is important. Generally this means spending a fair amount of time looking for an image, unless the article has a compelling photo or graphic in it already. Google image search is very helpful for this, along with some creative search querying.

Given that we are posting a lot of dry/technical content, and that Facebook audiences tend not to go for that kind of thing (compared to Twitter, for example), we try to include what our esteemed Communications Director Eric J. Weiner refers to as “porn for economists,” i.e., cartoons and other images that are topical but also a little more ‘fun’ than your standard economics fair. Nick Alpha has a USB drive stocked full of this kind of porn to get you started.

This is porn:

The text accompanying the photo should be kept short and to the point. Generally the title of the article will work if the title is demonstrative of what’s in the article. If the title of the article hits a topic that is “controversial” for the Institute, too political, or makes a statement that the Institute doesn’t necessarily support, it is a good idea to reword or change the text to something else. Often this can just mean taking a declarative title and changing it into a question and then asking our audience to comment. You can also attribute the title/statement to the author or publication it comes from, which will make it clear that this is not an Institute position but coming from an external source. Another option is to instead take a key sentence or statement from the article that better conveys what it is about, or the part of it the Institute would want to highlight.

For the link, use the Hootsuite link shortener. This allows us to track clicks across both Facebook and Twitter through Hootsuite using the Hootesuite analytics tools.

Here is an example of a Facebook post:

Posting videos

For videos (mainly Youtube), you should paste the link into the status box and let the link populate. You don’t need to use a link shortener for videos and can just paste in the original link, as the link text won’t be viewed in the final product. Once the link populates does, you should delete the link itself (the video link won’t go anywhere once it’s loaded) and put in some short teaser text for the video.You can also edit the title and preview text that goes with the video, but be aware that the preview text will often not show up on mobile devices at all (depending on Facebook’s mood and the alignment of the planets when they release the latest version of their mobile app).

Posting just links

We generally do not post anything as just a link (as opposed to as a photo, with a link inserted in the photo description) because links tend to perform worse. Even with Facebook’s “improved” link images, which can now be substantially larger than the weak little thumbnail you got before, a photograph will appear better in Newsfeed (and avoid any weird cropping issues) and will tend to perform better.

Here’s why:

Facebook “Call to Action”

When possible, you should include a “Call to Action” (CTA) in the post. Studies have shown that using a CTA (literally telling your audience how to respond to a post) can greatly increase engagement. CTA’s include asking your audience to like, share, or comment on your post. We have tended to ask for comments, as this has helped to generate a lot more discussion on our posts.

CTA’s can also help by changing the ‘meaning’ of an action to the viewer. Read this for a good overview on why CTA’s are important:

But don’t overuse CTA’s or you will annoy your audience. Browse through our past Facebook posts for examples of CTA’s we’ve used.

CTA Sidenote:

Our fearless Commandante Eric J. Weiner has a visceral hatred of exclamation points. But you should still use them in social media for things like this, as it’s best practices. He may also tell you to get off his lawn.

CTA Examples:

Facebook Hashtags

Hashtags on Facebook are less useful than they are on Twitter – most people still don’t use them and it’s not clear if they ever will. Still, hashtags are useful for a few things. 1) Tagging major terms (like #China or #economics) 2) Tagging an ongoing campaign so that clicking on the hashtag will allow you to see all prior posts in the campaign (e.g. hashtags for all posts related to an event like #INETHongKong for our 2012 plenary conference that we hosted in Hong Kong)

But don’t overuse the hashtags on Facebook. You don’t need to use them in every post like you do on Twitter (see below).

Creating a Twitter Post

To create a Twitter post, log in to Hootsuite and paste the title of the article into the text box in the top left corner of Hootsuite. Then paste the link into the link shortener and click “shrink” to add it to the post. Then check to make sure the spacing/formatting is correct on the post. Next add up to two hashtags to key terms. Generally you will not want to add more than two hashtags to a post, as that tends to decrease engagement. If the tweet is short and doesn’t include any key terms in it, you can add a key term as a hashtag after the link to increase visibility (e.g., “The High Cost of Ocean Decline | Andrés Velasco #Sustainability”). For posts that are part of a series or attached to an event, you should decide on a hashtag prior to the event and use it for every tweet related to the event (e.g., for our Economics and Theology series, we’ve used “#EconTheology”, and for our conference in China titled “The Good Life” we used “#GoodLifeChina). Try to keep tweets as short as possible. Generally shorter tweets will perform better.

If you found the article via another Twitter user, give credit to the source of the information using either “HT” (Hat Tip) or “via” and then twitter user.

Retweeting

Make an effort to retweet relevant content from our grantees, associates, and partners. You can use the “/grantees” list in Hootsuite to look for content from grantees and associates (it includes both despite the name). Be sure to check the Twitter page of Institute President Rob Johnson for relevant content and retweet him when possible. Unfortunately,Hootsuite doesn’t retweet effectively. You have to click the time posted in the post in Hootsuite for it to take you to the tweet on Twitter. Then click “Retweet” on Twitter.

Retweeting:

You end up here:

Social Media Advertising

Overview

We have so far chosen to advertise only on Facebook and not on Twitter, as the ROI on Twitter tends to be much lower.

The primary tool you will use to create ads on Facebook is the “Ads Manager,” which you can find by clicking on the “Ads Manager” button on the top right corner of the Institute’s Facebook page (you will only see this if you are an admin). All ads are placed on the “INET Master Account.”

Historically, Facebook’s Ad Manager has been a giant pile of crap, but it has improved significantly recently, so you are in luck. This means that you usually will not need to bother with the “Power Editor” advertising tool on Facebook, which is a plus, since it is significantly more onerous and annoying than the regular Ad Manager tool. (While the Power Editor used to come with the added bonus of additional functionality, now it just sucks.)

Still, be ready for lots of random and arbitrary changes to Ad Manager that are sometimes big improvements but that other times make little to no sense (when frustrated, just watch this:

Creating a Facebook Ad

Ad Manager

Once you are in Ad Manager, you can either create an ad from scratch by clicking “Create an Ad” in the top right corner or you can use an existing ad and choose the “Create a Similar Ad” option to save time. The latter option makes it easy to create multiple ads for posts with similar topics (e.g., inequality or TBTF), as you will likely be targeting the ad at the same or similar interests. When selecting “Create a Similar Ad,” make sure you are using the “post engagement” ad and not the “sponsored story,” as the latter will create only another sponsored story and not another post engagement ad (which also gives you the option to automatically create a ‘sponsored story’ ad in conjunction with the main ad).

Ad Creator Basics

When you are in the ad creator, you will first need to make sure you have selected the correct “Objective” for the ad. For most ads, this will just be “Page Post Engagement.” The other option we have used the most is “Page Likes” (more on that below). After you select “Page Post Engagement,” you will need to select which post you are advertising with the dropdown menu.

Next, you will have the option to place a “News Feed” ad and/or a “Right Column” ad. Click “Remove” for the Right Column ad. We only place Newsfeed ads on Facebook.We have found that these perform better and tend to get much more real engagement (as opposed to spam engagement) than right column ads. Many ad blockers also block right column ads, so people will not see them at all – but they do not block Newsfeed ads. Make sure the “Sponsored Stories” box is also checked, so that the sponsored story ad will be automatically created alongside the main ad.

Audience Targeting

You can load an existing audience, if you have one. This is a new feature and we haven’t created any that are of use so far, but it may be worth exploring to see if it can reduce workload in any way. Easy shortcuts are always good for this kind of thing.

Then you will tailor the audience by location. You have to select the countries where you want the ad to be shown. You can tailor the targeting down to specific cities, but generally you will want to go with the whole country unless you are trying to generate an audience for a specific local event. You can select up to 25 countries to include. The most basic audience is just the United States, but depending on the post you may also want to target countries the region(s) it is relevant to. Posts about general topics (e.g., “inequality” or “sustainability”) can be targeted for a global audience (meaning countries from all regions).

You should find a list of the top countries in terms of Facebook usage and keep it handy for selecting who you are targeting. You can also use the list of our top Facebook countries (from Facebook Insights), as almost all of the high-Facebook-usage countries will be reflected there by now. Be careful not to select countries that will tend to get you a lot more spam than real engagement. (We have run in to this problem with Bangladesh, Egypt, and Indonesia so far, so we don’t advertise in any of those three anymore.)

Audience Targeting Part 2: Facebook tries to “optimize” your results for you, generally fails

Also be aware that if you include countries where the cost to reach people (CPM for short)is lower, a disproportionate amount of your ad spend will go toward that country only, as Facebook will try to “optimize” your advertisement to get you the most “effective” results (i.e., cheapest cost per action), location be damned.

Facebook also does the same thing within a Campaign, so creating multiple ads for the same Campaign will not solve this issue. You will actually need to create separate Campaigns with a new ad in each campaign if you want to reach a specific country, especially one that is more expensive to reach like the U.S.

The practical result of this is that in our effort to reach a U.S. audience, we sometimes create two ads/campaigns for a given piece of content. One will be targeted at a more global audience (Europe, Asia, and/or Latin America etc.) and then a separate ad will be aimed at just a U.S. audience. Be aware that your CPM will be significantly higher for ads aimed at just the U.S. and that this is normal. (Basically it’s a result of competing with other advertisers for consumers with a lot of disposable income in the most heavily advertised country on the planet.)

Audience Targeting Part 3: Age/Gender

For “Age” we usually use 19 as a lower bound and put no maximum. The goal is to hit people starting as students in their first year of college and up. Some content will be aimed at only a younger audience (e.g., students), in which case you will want to shorten the age range (e.g., to 18-35).