Social Media Publishing: Strategy, Benefits, Tools, Best Practices

A solid social media publishing strategy is non-negotiable for any business today, on par with marketing, revenue operations, and HR management. 

Having a presence on social media is essential to reach your audience and stay relevant in their minds. This is, however, more complex than it seems. Being present on social media is more than just having a LinkedIn or Facebook account and posting pictures occasionally. 

Social media publishing has become a strategic process that involves careful planning, consistency, and understanding what resonates with your audience.

When done right, social media publishing can drive brand awareness, boost engagement, and generate leads. But if you’re not taking it seriously or treating it as an afterthought, you might be missing out on huge opportunities. 

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Why is social media publishing important?

Social media is as important as a website for businesses today. Just like how companies invest time and resources into publishing and maintaining a website, they have to focus on social media publishing because a company’s social presence plays a crucial role in building credibility, awareness, and growing the business. There are several benefits of social media publishing for businesses, whether it is a small business, a startup, or an established enterprise.

But social media publishing isn’t just about posting randomly. It involves planning, timing, and understanding what your audience wants to see. The goal is to make sure your content reaches the right people at the right time to create real engagement.

Here’s why social media publishing is important:

Visibility and discoverability

 Social media platforms are key touchpoints where potential customers discover and learn about your business. Having an active social media presence ensures your brand is visible and easily found online, and conveys your brand story to potential customers. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn allow you to connect with people where they spend most of their time. If you're not on social media, you're missing out on valuable visibility. Social media publishing ensures you’re part of the conversation, expanding your reach and helping your brand stay visible in an otherwise crowded space.

Brand credibility

 A vibrant, well-managed social media presence demonstrates your brand’s authenticity and engagement with customers. This helps build credibility and trust, giving new visitors a view into your brand, employees, and your products or services. Social media allows businesses to show their personality, share their story, and create a community around their brand.

Customer engagement

 Social media allows businesses to directly interact with their audience through comments, messages, and shares. Social media gives businesses the chance to engage directly with their audience and this immediate feedback loop helps build stronger relationships with customers.

Content distribution

 Social media is an excellent way to amplify any content that is created by the company. You can share updates, guides, ebooks, and valuable content directly with your followers, encouraging them to engage and share with others. Social media publishing helps distribute content widely, share it with the target audience, and track the response to the content. Social media publishing enables businesses to measure how many people among their target audience have read or downloaded content. 

Adaptability and real-time engagement

 Social media allows businesses to quickly adapt to trends, share real-time updates, and stay relevant. Whether it's a new product launch or a response to current events, you can share information instantly with your audience.

Competitor benchmarking

 Your competitors are already on social media. If you’re not publishing content, you’re leaving space for them to capture the attention of your potential customers. By actively publishing on social media, you stay top of mind of your prospective customers and ensure that you gain an edge over competitors. You can show them how you’re different and better than your competitors, and use social media publishing to nurture brand loyalty. Social media is also a great way to analyze and understand your competitors, their strategy, and their approach to building their business. You can benchmark yourself against competitors and refine your strategy to become the best in the business. 

Lead generation

 Social media has evolved from just a communication tool to a platform where businesses can generate leads and drive sales. Social media publishing can directly lead to more sales. When you regularly post content, you’re creating opportunities for people to discover your products or services. By sharing testimonials, product demos, or special promotions, you can engage with them, build warm relationships, and pitch to them at the right time to make a sale. Social media platforms also offer targeted advertising options, which makes it even easier to reach potential leads and drive sales.

Build relationships

 Social media is about building connections. When you consistently publish content that resonates with your audience, you ensure that your audience keeps coming back to your posts and look up to you for information and insight. They will also react to your posts and provide feedback. Engaging with them helps you establish relationships that go beyond just selling a product or service. Regularly publishing content keeps your audience engaged, gives them a reason to keep coming back, and positions you as an authority in your industry

Analytics

 Social media offers detailed engagement metrics, allowing businesses to refine strategies based on data, improving future performance. You can see how people react to your posts, what content they engage with most, and what isn’t resonating. This instant feedback allows you to adjust your strategy in real time, making sure you’re always delivering content that connects with your audience.

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How to plan your social media publishing strategy

Social media publishing is a major part of any company’s marketing strategy today. Simply posting at random, without a plan can lead to low engagement and missed opportunities. Here are some best practices to help you maximize the impact of your social media publishing.

Set clear goals and KPIs

Before publishing, set clear objectives for what you want to achieve with your social media marketing. Whether it’s building brand awareness, increasing engagement, or driving traffic to your website, define your goals and identify the people who will be in charge of running your social media publishing workflows. Once goals are set, establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success. This ensures you’re not posting content aimlessly but working toward specific outcomes.

Identify your top 3 platforms

There are multiple social media platforms that businesses can use, each designed for a specific purpose, suitable for certain formats, and popular among certain demographics. Based on your goals, identify the platforms you want to focus on, considering where your target audience is most active. Focus your efforts on these platforms to ensure your resources are being used effectively.

Create a social content calendar

Consistency is key in social media publishing. A content calendar helps you stay organized and ensures you're posting regularly without overwhelming your followers. Plan your content in advance, have a mix of different types of social media content, and schedule posts during peak times when your audience is most active. Here’s a guide with tips and templates that will help you create a social media calendar. 

Optimize your content for each platform

Each social media platform has its unique features and audience preferences. So, it is essential to optimize your content and publish different types of posts to suit the platform's format, style, and best practices. For example, Instagram is designed for videos and photos, while LinkedIn supports long-form posts and a professional tone. Make sure your content fits each platform’s strengths.

Automate the social publishing process

Social media publishing can be quite time-consuming. However, social media scheduling tools and publishing tools help automate the process, allowing you to save time and focus on strategy instead. For example, social publishing tools like Highperformr help with social media scheduling, track analytics, and help manage the entire social media management process. 

Refine and update your strategy periodically

Social media is anything but static. Even if you have cracked what works for your audience, it is unlikely that it’ll remain so for more than a few weeks. Make sure you update and adapt your strategy regularly. Whether it's adjusting the frequency of your posts, experimenting with different types of content, or refining your messaging, keep switching things up to break monotony. 

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Social media publishing best practices and tips

Ensure consistency

Consistency should be the No.1 priority while planning your social media publishing. This keeps your audience engaged and improves your social media presence over time. Whether it’s posting daily, weekly, or bi-weekly, stick to a schedule. Regular content publishing helps build familiarity and trust with your audience. They know that your social media handle is something they should follow in order to ensure they don’t miss the valuable information that you post. 

Identify best times to publish

It is important to be smart while posting on social media to ensure that your posts get the highest impressions and visibility. While planning your social media publishing schedule, be sure to post your content at times when there are highest chances of viewership and engagement among your target audience. Research shows that different platforms have peak hours where engagement is higher – this can be determined based on the type of post, the location of your target audience, etc. Track the response to your previous posts to determine what works best for you.  

Schedule weeks or months' worth of content 

Consistency is key for engagement on social media. It is important to publish on social media at least twice a week. Rather than scrambling to come up with content every other day, you could take some time to schedule weeks or even months of content in advance. Social media management tools such as Highperformr come with a GenAI-native Social AI Copilot that can generate a months’ orth of content in less than an hour. Tap into tools like this to create posts and schedule them. This way, you can ensure consistency, save time, and use time during the week to engage with your audience who have reacted to your posts. ‍

Track your competitors' content

Competitor benchmarking is critical for any aspect of business. And this applies to social media marketing as well. Keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing and the kind of content they’re posting can give you a new perspective on industry trends and gaps in the market. Observing their engagement patterns and their audience response to posts will help with deciphering their content strategy and go-to-market strategy. 

Engage with your audience

Publishing content is only part of the task. What’s more important is engaging with your audience. Be sure to respond to comments, direct messages, and reshares so you can nurture relationships with those who interact with your posts. It can help you gain feedback on your content, and give your followers more of what they enjoy. Interacting with your

audience also enables you to delve deeper into the content on your post, open the floor up for discussions and debates, and bring more people into the conversation.  

Tap into the power of employees

Your employees can be powerful brand ambassadors. Encourage them to share company content, participate in campaigns, collaborate across teams,  and amplify your brand’s reach. Social media content shared by employees often receives higher engagement than posts from company accounts alone.

Analyze data to improve your strategy 

Most social media platforms and social media publishing tools track post analytics and provide data on impressions, engagement rates, likes, etc. Crunching these numbers and analyzing trends can give you a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not. Use these insights to tweak your social media content, post scheduling, content type, etc. to ensure it resonates with what your audience enjoys. 

Keep track of social media trends and platform algorithms

Social media trends change quite frequently so it is important to keep track of what’s popular and what’s trending at any given time. Whether it is the type of content or the format, be sure to track what’s trending and give your audience the kind of content they expect and enjoy. Similarly, it is essential to keep tabs on changes on each platform – in terms of features, algorithm changes, etc. 

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Social media publishing tools: How to choose a social media scheduling and publishing tool

Social media publishing tools make it easier to schedule, manage, and share content across various social platforms. These tools save time by allowing you to plan posts in advance, track performance, and maintain a consistent online presence. Modern social media publishing tools not just help schedule posts but also help create social posts using GenAI, use automations such as repost or corsspost to amplify post visibility, help unlimited users collaborate on social media campaigns, and more. 

Social media scheduling tools make social media management easy and more efficient, enabling you to get better ROI from your social media efforts. 

The market is rife with social media publishing and social media scheduling tools; here is a comprehensive list for you to explore. 

Before that though, here’s a brief guide on how to choose a social media publishing tool that is ideal for your requirements. Ensure that the social media publishing tool you buy has the following features and capabilities: 

Social publishing at scale

The platform should be able to support publishing at scale, and assist with scheduling and publishing consistently across multiple social handles.

Team collaboration

Social media isn’t something that can be done by one person. Social media management tools should be built for teams so teams of all sizes can collaborate and execute social campaigns on one screen. Social media management software must enable users to collaborate on drafts and share drafts, support unlimited users, enable hassle-free content approvals easily to save time. 

AI and Automation

Modern social media management platforms must be built for the future and should be AI-native. The tools should be able to automate tasks and help save time. The best social media management platforms are those that use AI to assist with content ideation and content creation for social media. 

Granular data, in-depth analytics and AI insight

A social media management platform should be able to provide you with detailed, granular analytics and AI-powered insight on what works and what doesn’t. It should help you identify accounts or handles that engage with you, what kind of posts your audience enjoy reading, etc.

High ROI

The best social media management platform is one that doesn’t just stop with scheduling and publishing, but helps you drive tangible results from your social media activity. The platform should be able to assist with employee advocacy, engaging in meaningful and impactful conversations, and drive business growth through social media.

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Social media publishing metrics: What you should be tracking

Tracking metrics and analyzing data is one of the most important parts of the social media publishing process. Here are some key metrics to track, whether you’re managing a business handle or a personal social media account.

Engagement rate

This metric tracks how much your audience interacts with your content, including likes, comments, shares, and clicks. A high engagement rate means your content resonates with your audience.

Impressions

Impressions tell you how many times your post was seen. It doesn’t mean people clicked or engaged with it, but it gives you an idea of your content’s reach. More impressions can lead to higher engagement if the content hits the mark.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

This metric shows how many people clicked on a link in your post compared to how many saw it. If your CTR is high, your content and call-to-action (CTA) are working well. A low CTR might mean you need to tweak your messaging, images, or CTAs to make them more compelling.

Post frequency and consistency

Monitoring your post frequency and balancing it with engagement levels helps you find ideal posting schedule for your handle. Tools like Highperformr show your posting consistency and also visually highlight posting streaks to help you understand your posting consistency. 

Follower growth

Gaining followers shows that your content is attracting attention. While followers aren’t everything, a growing audience means more opportunities for engagement. 

There are a lot more metrics to track. Here’s a detailed list of metrics, along with information on why tracking these metrics is important. 

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Social media publishing at scale using Highperformr

Highperformr is a GenAI-native social media management and social media publishing tool that is designed to help businesses publish at scale. It comes with a native Social AI Copilot that assists with creating content for up to 30 days, and helps with automating scheduling of posts on social platforms. Highperformr has in-built automations for cross-posting and reposting so as to help amplify visibility and drive engagement. 

Highperfomr is also built for teams, with a host of features that make team collaboration seamless and easy. 

Explore more social media publishing features here and sign up for Free now to get started with your social media publishing!