Monday, October 17, 2016

How My Day Planner Recently Became My Social Media Best Friend

by Molly Jo Realy @RealMoJo68

I’m all about the social scheduling. I like the one-and-done apps when I can share one link and it will post about nine different ways or more. Especially when I can use my Smart Phone to get things done. I have all the social media world I need in the palm of my hand.

But scheduling posts doesn’t always keep me on track. I rely on my memory from day to day, only to find the occasional overbooking has occurred with media posts and social events. What’s This Girl to do?

For years I’ve carried around my Day Planner with good intentions. But until recently, it was used as a diary of what had happened; not upcoming events. It makes for great coffee table talk. “Oh, I see you attended this conference,” or “Your book came out last month?”

Life shouldn’t be lived in the past. Neither should our social media. Just as a book launch and holidays are set on a specific date but the prep work begins much sooner, so should we plan our media posts.

Of course those instant “ohmagoodness look at this cupcake I’m having for breakfast!” posts offer whimsical spontaneity and grab the likes, but the overall content calendar should be plotted like a carefully constructed, well, plot.

Working backwards from the Big Event or just a regular weekly/monthly schedule, make a list of the important posts, and how you plan to share them. Are there sub-level items you want your Swarm to know? How will you take your readers and fans on your journey with you?

You can share ongoing updates, book launch steps, weekly recipes, Bible verses, commentaries. The trick is to be consistent and move forward. Have a plan, and a planner. Keep a To-Do List and set those follow-up alerts.

I now use my Day Planner with month-at-a-glance and week-at-a-glance pages. The month lists the highlights and the weekly pages gives more room to write details. Deadlines? Flagged with red Post-its. Guest posts on other blogs? Highlights and yellow stickees for the submission date, with purple stickee follow up on the post date.

Now when someone asks what I’m doing this holiday season, I know how much time and effort I need to set aside for my writing and media tasks, and how much I can invest in that eggnog fellowship.  

With some sweet tea, a spoonful of honey, and a back-up plan,
~ Happy writing.

Molly Jo

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Molly Jo is a writer, editor, social media ninja, and producer of the weekly Firsts in Fiction podcast. She has been featured in children’s magazines, on blogs and devotional websites, and her short stories have earned her awards and scholarships from nationally acclaimed writing programs. She is the founder of New Inklings Press and author of The Unemployment Cookbook: Ideas for Feeding Families One Meal at a Timeand other books available through her website and on Amazon.

Her current work in progress, NOLA, is a location mystery set in New Orleans and is scheduled for publication in late 2016.

You can find her on FacebookTwitterPinterest, and her blog, Frankly, My Dear . . .

5 comments:

  1. You are so organized! Great tips. Thanks!

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  2. I used to have a planner, and referred to it as My Brain! Once my kids were grown and life was less frantic, the planner went by the wayside. Then I jumped into this writer pool—excuse me, writer ocean! I revived my blog (one prior post, and that not on writing, LOL) and as it got busier, I had a harder time keeping up. I write notes on anything, ANYthing, and was losing track of who and what was scheduled when. I now have a master excel spreadsheet, with my calendar, and a tickler system that works for me, tabs for contacts and site links to refer to, contest winners and addresses, word count for current WIP, and sales.

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  3. Like Robin, I had a planner once, then I retired. I like your suggestions, so I guess I better dig the ole planner out.

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  4. Excellent advice, and I love the idea of using the sticky notes as a mental flag!

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  5. Great post, Molly Jo! Thank you for the great ideas and motivation. I set up a "Day Planner" type calendar in Google. I call it KSMoore-Social Media. I have access to it on my phone, my mac, my work PC. (I have a fairly demanding day job, as many of us do.) I can set reminders/notifications and get a day-at-a-glance or week-at-a-glance and I have it on all my tools. My goal for 2017 is to use it to remind me to post and include in the calendar entry the content to post. That way, I can use my off-hours and weekends to tee everything up and then "just do it" when prompted throughout the week.

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